Pavilion of Women

IX

IN LESS THAN A month after this, on a day when the first light snow fell, Fengmo went away. All the household stood at the gate to see him go. The street that went past the gate ended at the river, and the menfolk, and with them only Madame Wu, walked with him to the water’s edge. Hands helped him with his baggage and hands helped him over the side of the rocking rowboat that was to carry him to a small steam launch that would take him to a river steamer. The river steamer would take him to the ocean and the great ship that lay waiting. Above the whitened ground a soft gray sky brooded. The boat pushed off, and snowflakes melted on the boatman’s oars. A score of farewells followed Fengmo. Madame Wu did not call after him. She stood, a small straight figure wrapped in fur, and watched this son of hers cast off from the shores of his home. She was frightened and sad, but she comforted herself by these words, “He is free.”

And wrapping her coat about her, she returned to her own walls.

With Fengmo’s going Brother André would have ceased to come, but Madame Wu invited him to continue his lessons, taking Linyi as pupil instead of Fengmo.

“When my son returns from foreign countries,” she said to Brother André, in her cool graceful fashion, “I would like his wife to know something of what he knows.”

Now Fengmo’s marriage had been patched together in this fashion: One day Madame Wu went to the Kang house and talked with Linyi very gently in her mother’s presence. She told Linyi that Fengmo was going away, and she herself invited her to return in order that if possible before Fengmo went away, he might leave her with child.

“I do this, not only for the sake of our house,” Madame Wu said to Linyi, “but also for your own sake, lest you be unfulfilled.”

She had studied Linyi’s face as she spoke — a selfish pretty face, she thought. Good mothers always had selfish daughters. Meichen was too good. She made her children too happy. They thought of home as heaven and their mother as earth.

“It is not well for a young woman to be left empty when her husband goes away,” she continued.

To this Madame Kang had heartily agreed. Since her quarrel with her friend she had repented her anger. Linyi had aided her in this. For, while the girl had come home with all her mother’s pity, Madame Kang began after some days to see her Linyi as a willful young woman. She was no longer a girl, but a married wife. Yet she behaved as she had when she was a girl in a rich house. She rose late and dawdled about the courts and did not so much as pick up her handkerchief when it fell from her pocket, but she called for a maid to come and hand it to her. In small ways Madame Kang now began to reproach Linyi and to think that perhaps Fengmo had had something to complain about. When she heard that Fengmo was going away she, too, was eager for Linyi to return to him.

“You do not belong to this house any more,” she told the girl more than once. “You belong to the Wu house.”

“How can I make that slender, naughty girl become a woman and a wife?” Madame Wu now asked herself secretly. “And not only for my house but for her own happiness?”

So Brother André had come into her mind again. She saw his great patient frame, his dark kind face. But could he teach a young wife?

“You must go into your husband’s house this very day,” Madame Kang declared. And as eagerly as she had once taken Linyi back, she now sent her forth again. Linyi went in silence. She was not stupid, and clearly enough she felt the change in her own mother. She knew that she had been put out of her heaven and earth. Her heart smarted, and silently she went back into Fengmo’s court. He had been exceedingly busy preparing for his going. But since he knew he was to be freed, he was gay and careless to her. It did not now matter greatly whether she were here or not since he was leaving the house.

“I have come back,” she had said to him.

He did not say he was glad, she did not ask if he were. Neither expected the other’s love. She helped him with new docility to fold his garments, and she dusted his books. At night they slept together. He took her and she yielded, partly for duty’s sake to the house, partly because they were young and hungry. In the morning they had parted still without speech. For decency’s sake she did not go outside the court.

“Until we meet!” he had said.

“Heaven give you safe journeying,” she had replied, and stood leaning against the door to watch him while he went. Some faint uncertainty shook her heart from its middle place in her breast, but she was not ready to see any fault in herself.

“I am still sleepy,” she thought, and yawned widely, and without hiding her red mouth she returned to the big bed and rolled into the silk quilts and slept like a little chrysalis.

From this sleep Madame Wu awakened her as soon as Fengmo was gone. “Come, Linyi,” she said, “you have slept long enough. Now you must wake and begin your education.”

“My education?” Linyi faltered.

“You will learn cooking and embroidery in the morning,” Madame Wu said. “Elder Cousin will teach you. Then for an hour before the noon meal you will come to me, and I will teach you the classics. In the afternoon Brother André will teach you foreign languages. In the evening you will help the maids to put the children to bed. You must learn how to care for children.”

Linyi looked up out of the quilt. Her big eyes were startled, and her soft hair was all awry. “Now?” she asked.

“Now, at once,” Madame Wu said firmly. She held a thin bamboo cane in her hand, and she tapped this on the floor. “Wash yourself,” she said. “Brush your hair. Then come to me.”

She went back to her own courts, her mouth set too grimly for its own beauty. “I do this for Fengmo,” she thought. “Then when this is done I can think again about my own freedom.”

But because she did not trust Linyi she stayed by her that afternoon when Brother André came. Linyi must not be idle. Then, too, for the sake of honor she herself must supervise the hours this foreign priest was with her own daughter-in-law in her son’s absence. She knew that Brother André was a soul, but who else but her would believe the big body was only a husk?

In this way every day she sat in the highest seat in the library, her dragonheaded cane, which she carried now that Old Lady was dead, between her hands. She listened to everything Brother André taught Linyi. But while the girl plodded unwillingly along the hard part of learning, Madame Wu’s mind flew ahead and wandered into a hundred bypaths of wonder.

Thus she came to know how the earth and the seas are gathered into a great ball swinging among the stars and planets, and she understood the paths of sun and moon, the passage of winds and clouds. But these were as nothing to her wonder when she came to understand the tongues of man. For she liked to do this: she chose a word, such a word as life, or death, as love, hatred, food, air, water, hunger, sleep, house, flower, tree, grass, bird, and she learned this word through all the languages which Brother André knew. These languages were the voices of mankind. She learned everything with the excuse of helping Linyi to learn.

And as she learned, all the things which had occupied her life came to have meaning. In the past she had sometimes wondered why she should spend herself in the continued round of birth and death and birth again. Within these four walls, as man begot and woman conceived in order that the house of Wu might not perish, sometimes she had asked herself what it mattered if one house died. In a year when too many girls were born, in a year when an idiot was dropped too early from a womb, she had often been disheartened. Especially in the years when she had only looked forward to her fortieth birthday had she refused to answer the questioning of her own soul. Little Sister Hsia on one of those days had chanced to be there.

“May I read you from the blessed book, Madame?” Little Sister had asked.

Madame Wu had been weary to the bone that day, for in addition to all else she had known that she was pregnant again. But she was always too courteous to refuse a guest. “If it is your pleasure, read,” she had replied.

Then Little Sister Hsia had taken out her sacred book, and she had read aloud in her broken childish fashion words like these:

“What is man that thou art mindful of him and the son of man that thou rememberest him? For the days of man are as grass—”

“Stop!” Madame Wu had cried.

Her voice had burst out of her, and so unusual was this that Little Sister Hsia had stared at her.

“Are these words to comfort a soul?” Madame Wu had demanded. “Are these the words of a god? Rather, I say, of a devil! If I should listen to these words, Little Sister, I would hang myself. Read me no more from your book, lest I cannot live.”

But she had brooded over the words, and she remembered them now. Yes, it was true. Man’s flesh was as grass. When her child had been born dead, she had remembered the words as she held the small, still body in her arms. But today, as she listened to the voices of mankind crying out in different tongues but always the same word, she felt in herself a new wonder.

“Do all men also cry out a word for God?” she asked Brother André.

“All men,” he replied gravely, and then he rolled out sonorous syllables that struck upon her ears like drums. “God — God — God — God—” in twenty tongues, and all the tongues of man.

“From all over the earth we cry out to Old Heaven,” she said musingly, and the drums echoed in her soul.

On such nights she could not sleep. In silence she allowed Ying to prepare her, and she climbed into the high redwood platform of the bed. Behind the silk curtains she gave herself up to her soul and meditated on the meaning of all she had learned. Brother André came to be for her a well, wide and deep, a well of learning and knowledge. In the night she thought of scores of questions to which she wanted answers. Sometimes when her memory grew burdened with their number she rose from her bed and lit her candle. And she took up her camel’s-hair brush and brushed down the questions upon a sheet of paper in her fine script. The next afternoon when Brother André came she read them to him one by one and listened carefully to all he said.

Now, his manner of answering questions was exceedingly simple, but this was because he was so learned. He did not need, as lesser men do, to talk over and above the pith of the matter. Instead, he knew how, as Taoists of old knew, to put into a handful of words the essence of the essence of truth. He stripped the leaves away, and he plucked the fruit and cracked the husk and peeled the inner shell and split the flesh and took out the seed and divided it, and there was the kernel, pure and clean.

And Madame Wu’s mind was so whetted at this time of her life, so bladelike and piercing, that she took this kernel and from it comprehended all. Young Linyi sat between the two, her eyes wide, as these few words were said and heard, and it was plain that for her it was all far above her and beyond her. Her mind still slept in youth.

But Brother André marveled at Madame Wu. “You have lived behind these walls all your life,” he said one day, “and yet when I speak as heretofore I have spoken only to one or two of my few brother scholars, you know what I mean.”

To this she replied, “You have told me of the magic glass which makes small things large. A fragment of dust, you told me, could be made as large as a desert, and if the fragment were comprehended, the desert was known. This house is the fragment of dust, and from it I comprehend all. Inside these four walls is the whole of life.” She caught sight of Linyi’s hostile young face.

“Are you saying we are dust, Mother?” she asked.

“No, child,” Madame Wu replied. “I am saying that you are all of life.”

Over the young head her eyes met Brother André’s. “Teach this child,” she said.

“Mother, I am not a child,” Linyi pouted.

But Madame Wu smiled. That afternoon when Brother André was putting his books together, she asked, “Dare I ask you to take me, too, as your pupil?” she asked humbly.

“I am honored by the wish,” he replied in his grave way.

“Then for an hour, perhaps, after you have taught Linyi?”

He inclined his head. Thereafter each evening for an hour he answered Madame Wu’s questions. Scrupulous in spite of her age, Madame Wu bade Ying sit on the seat nearest the door while she and Brother André talked.

“Madame, I must ask you a question. If it makes you angry I beg you to send me away,” Ying said one morning.

“Why should I be angry at you now after the years you have spoken as you liked?” Madame Wu asked.

She put down the book she was reading, but she kept her thumb in the pages, ready to read again when Ying had finished.

“I cannot please you in what I am about to say,” Ying began. “But while you have been wandering around the earth with this big priest, the household has been at sevens and eights with disorder. The wet nurse to your eldest son’s wife’s second son is losing her milk. The child grows thin. At night there is quarreling in your second son’s court. His wife’s maid says there is no pregnancy there yet. And the Second Lady and our master — well, Madame, I will not presume. But I say it is wrong for a lady like you to withdraw herself into books as you do. It is not all evil that our ancestors taught us that women ought not to read and write.”

This Ying said as though she had committed it to heart. Madame Wu listened, the old half-smile on her face. But her thumb slipped out of the book, and she closed it and put it on the table. “Thank you, good soul,” she said.

She rose and went into her bedroom. The morning was cool, and she put on a fur coat before she went out. In the court the orchids were drying with frost and the leaves were sinking into the loam of the earth. But the sprays of berries on the Indian bamboo were growing scarlet and heavy. A blackbird sat perched on a rock, eating them, and Ying ran at him to frighten him away as she followed. Now that her mistress had been so patient under rebuke, Ying felt guilty of impudence, and she tried to make amends with her usual chatter. Madame Wu listened to it without answering. It occurred to her as she went through Old Lady’s empty court that it would be well if Liangmo brought his family here to live, near her, so that she could more easily watch over the children. Then she could move Tsemo and Rulan into Liangmo’s present court, and the larger space might add peace to them.

The day was fair. She moved through the clear sunshine in a well-being which she herself did not understand. These four walls around this piece of earth were full of human troubles, but she felt herself able to meet them and even to cure them because she was no longer a part of them. By her separation from Mr. Wu, in the flesh, she had cut all cords that had entangled her. She mused on this strong secret bond of body to body, which when it was cut, freed not only body but soul. And her soul followed the paths that were now opened over all the earth. Thus she stepped into Liangmo’s court as a goddess might have come, to minister and not to share.

But the wail of the child crying struck her ear with painful sharpness. She forgot everything and hurried into the house. There Meng sat, and there, too, sat the young wet nurse holding the hungry child to her empty breast. Tears ran down her pale cheeks. The child sucked and turned his head away again to scream with anger when no milk came.

“What now?” Madame Wu asked. “How has your milk dried?”

The young woman laid the little boy in Meng’s arms while she wept.

“Have you given her crab soup with poached eggs?” Madame Wu inquired of Meng.

“We have tried everything,” Meng replied. “I thought it was nothing at first, a cold she had, or that she had overeaten, and we mixed rice flour into gruel for the child for a meal or two. But this has gone on for two days, and the child is not fed. His flesh is slipping from his bones.”

The older child’s wet nurse now came in. “I have offered my milk,” she said, “but it is too old for this child. He vomits it up.” She looked pleased with herself as she spoke. “I have never lost my milk, Elder Lady, so how can I know what should be done?”

“Go away,” Madame Wu ordered her, seeing her vanity and knowing that she was a woman greedy for gifts.

The young wet nurse went on crying, and Madame Wu sat down and folded her hands on her dragonheaded cane and looked at her.

“Your milk has dried because you are sad,” she said. “What is your trouble?”

At first the young woman would not answer. She wiped her eyes on her sleeves and looked down, and when the tears came welling out she wiped them away again.

“It is strange you have water enough for your own tears and not for milk for my son,” Meng said distractedly.

“Hush,” Madame Wu said. “She is a human being. Speak, good soul.”

Thus encouraged, the young woman faltered in a voice so small as scarcely could be heard, “I have not seen my own child. I do not know how she does — I have been here nearly a month. Next week is the full month birthday of this child, and I do not know how my own little one does.”

At this Meng looked exceedingly angry. She pursed her red mouth and opened her black eyes wide. “How can you think of your child and let your milk dry up?” she exclaimed.

“Hush,” Madame Wu said again. “Let her child be brought here.”

“To be nursed with mine?” Meng cried.

“To save your son,” Madame Wu replied.

The young nurse fell on her knees before Madame Wu. “Oh, Elder Lady,” she gasped, “you are not cruel — they told me you were cruel—”

“Who said I was cruel?” Madame Wu asked.

“The steward — on the lands — he said I must not disobey you — that no one dared to disobey you. I did not want to come here, Lady. I have my own little house, my man works on your land, we have our child — a girl, it is true, but our first child. I was so proud of her. I had such a lot of milk. The steward said I must come or he would drive my man away from the land we have rented.”

“He had no command from me to speak so,” Madame Wu said. “I told only him only to find a wet nurse.”

“In the villages he makes us all feel afraid of you,” the young woman went on. “On the lands we all fear you through him, Elder Sister.”

Madame Wu was not a little confounded by these words, but she did not want this servant woman to know her confusion. In a great household those who command must not put themselves at the mercy of those who obey. She inclined her head and said gently, “I will send word today that your child is to be brought here. She may sleep near you, but not in the same room with my grandson.”

“You save a life,” the woman said, and fell on her knees and knocked her forehead on the tiles before Madame Wu.

But the child was wailing again and the woman rose from her knees and took him back. The tears dried on her cheeks, and she held the little boy to her breast. He snatched the nipple again and began to suck, and milk began to flow.

“You held back your milk,” Meng cried. “You refused to let it come down.”

But the woman looked up at her in timid wonder. She was a plain-faced farm woman. “I did not, Lady,” she said. “I do not know where my milk went nor why now it has come back, except that when our Elder Lady said my little girl could come, I felt loosened inside my heart, and so the milk came down.”

But Meng was still angry. “You common soul, you are too stupid!”

Madame Wu rose. “Since your son’s life depends upon her, it is perhaps better for you not to be angry, my daughter,” she said. “And you, woman, when your child comes, do not forget your duty is to my grandson.”

The young woman looked up humbly at Madame Wu. “I will not forget, Elder Lady,” she said in a low voice. “I will always feed him first.”

Something in her look and in her voice stayed Madame Wu’s steps. Underneath the quiet she felt something sullen and strong. But she did not ask what it was. She had never inquired too far into the troubles of those beyond her own family, lest she be somehow entangled in them. So now she spoke to Meng.

“I will give our Old Lady’s courts to my eldest son and you. Then I can be near my grandsons.”

Meng did not looked pleased, and Madame Wu hardened her purpose. “I will send servants to help you move today,” she said and without waiting for Meng to speak she went on to find her son Tsemo.

At this hour Tsemo should have been away from the house and at his business, which was to supervise the markets where they sold their produce. But he was still here. Madame Wu saw him in his court rinsing his mouth as though he had only just eaten.

She entered, and he spat hastily and put aside the cup he held.

“You are early, Mother,” he said.

“I am going my rounds,” she said. “I stopped to say that I shall give Liangmo’s court to you because I give him Old Lady’s rooms in order that my grandsons can be near me.”

“I will tell Rulan,” Tsemo said.

At the name she thought she saw a slight cold shade on his face, and she spoke straightly as her habit was when she saw trouble. “I am told that Rulan cries in the night.”

“Who told you?” he asked shortly.

“The servants,” she replied, “and it is a shameful thing when the troubles of the family become the talk of servants.”

“You were right, Mother,” he said. “I should not have married this woman.”

“Has love ended between you already?” Madame Wu inquired.

But to this he would not say no or yes. He walked about the tiny court, ten steps this way, sixteen steps that. “We have nothing to say to each other without its leading to quarreling,” he replied at last.

“How is it that she is not with child?” Madame Wu asked. “Quarreling always comes between men and women when there is no child.”

“How can I tell?” he replied and shrugged his shoulders. “She does not conceive. It is assuredly not my fault.”

“There can be no conception where there is quarreling,” Madame Wu told him. “Hearts in a roil dry the body’s juices and poison the blood. Between man and woman the stream of life forces must be kept clear.” She looked at this handsome son. “It is always easy for men and women to quarrel,” she went on. “Their natural difference is so great that unless they unite to create the new generation, they fly apart from each other like water and oil. A wife without child is a creature against nature, and she rebels against Heaven and earth, and the man is nothing to her. You must be patient with her until she conceives. Once that comes, you will find her a new woman.”

“Am I nothing to Rulan?” he asked arrogantly.

“She loves you too well,” Madame Wu replied, “and that is why she hates you. Her love comes to no fruit. She is teased by it. She has no defense from you, no refuge. She has no place to hide from you and be herself.”

She could see he was deeply hurt by what she said. “You shall take a journey somewhere,” she went on. “Then when you come back be gentle, not arrogant. Do not remind her that she is older than you or that she sought you first.”

“How do you know she sought me?” he asked. He stopped his pacing to stare at her. “How do you know everything?” he said half laughing, half rueful.

“I can see with my eyes,” she replied. She rested her round chin on her hands folded over the dragonhead of her cane. “She fears you and she hates her fears, and she loves you and she dreads her love. Yes, go away and leave her with me. There is an order between men and women, and you and Rulan have proceeded out of order. Look at Meng — with her all things proceed as Heaven ordains, and what harmony there is in her house! Her sons come one by one, and Liangmo is content with her. Neither of them loves the other too much, and together they create their new generation.”

“Meng is old-fashioned,” Tsemo said impatiently. “Also she is a little stupid. At least Rulan is not stupid.”

“It is not necessary for a woman to be stupid or not stupid,” Madame Wu replied with patience. “Such things are all in proportion. Man and woman in marriage must be in proportion to each other and so I chose Meng for Liangmo. He is wiser than she, but she is wise enough so that she understands what he says. In your marriage you are too equal and so you contend.”

“You are wiser than my father,” Tsemo said. He threw her a look so hard and bright that she was disturbed by it.

“Ah, I learned my wisdom,” she said quickly. “I am wise enough so that there was never any trouble between your father and me. That is why I sent Ch’iuming into his courts so that he could continue to be happy as he grew old.”

“And you?” Tsemo probed her cruelly.

“I also continue to be happy,” she said tranquilly.

Now Rulan came out of the house, as though she could no longer pretend she did not hear all that was being said in the small court outside her window. Madame Wu knew well enough that she had heard all, but in courtesy she carried on the pretense. “I was telling Tsemo that if you please, my daughter, you may move into Liangmo’s larger court since I move them into the court next mine, where I can watch over my grandsons better.”

“We thank you, Mother,” Rulan said. But no thanks showed in voice or look. She was carelessly dressed in an ugly robe of gray and green squares laid next to each other, and she looked older than she was.

“As soon as Tsemo goes away,” Madame Wu thought, “I will teach her not to look so ugly.” She continued to sit and look thoughtfully at her daughter-in-law, and Tsemo, following this gaze, found new fault with his wife.

“I hate that robe,” he said violently.

“Buy me another,” she said insolently, tossing back her short hair.

Madame Wu rose at once. She would not sit and see the two quarrel lest she be compelled to strive for peace between them. But she could not keep back entirely her displeasure.

“Tsemo is going away for a while,” she told Rulan. “I have given my permission. Be peaceful for these few days until he goes. Busy yourself with moving your goods tomorrow into your new court.”

“If Tsemo goes, I go,” Rulan said.

She stood very straight in the ugly robe, her hands clenched at her side. Madame Wu stood as straight, her hands on her cane.

“You do not go,” she said distinctly. “You will stay here with me. You have much to learn, and I will teach you.”

Again she did not wait for a daughter-in-law to answer. She turned and went out of the court, and not once did she look back.

“Ah, my sons’ wives,” she thought, “how troublesome they are to me! Would that I had early taken little girls into my house and reared them to be sons’ wives and bent them to fit our need! To bring strangers into the house to bear our grandsons is to bring in trouble.”

She found herself longing for evening and for peace, when, with Brother André for guide, she could leave body behind and sally forth, soul bare, into the world.

In the court she had left, Rulan looked at her young husband with surly suffering eyes. “You want to go away and leave me,” she muttered.

“It was wholly my mother’s idea,” Tsemo said lightly. He threw back his head and smoothed his long forelock. She saw those pale hands of his and felt the pull at her heart for which she now hated herself.

“I shall run away,” she said in the same sullen voice.

He laughed. “Not with me — I would not dare to come home again.”

“You are afraid of your mother!” she cried.

“I am, indeed,” he agreed.

This easy agreement was his trick against her. Time and again he yielded the point and left her nothing to grasp for her weapon.

“I would rather have no sons than have them afraid of me,” she declared.

“Well, you have no sons,” he said in his tranquil voice.

Her heart broke at the ancient taunt. Try as she could she could not free herself from its power. “Tsemo, do you really hate me?” she whispered. She came nearer to him as she spoke, and he looked down into her face.

“Why will you tear at me and wound me and give me no peace?” he said between his teeth.

“Peace from me!” she cried.

“No, only peace,” he said, “simple peace.”

“Peace so you can forget me!” she said passionately.

“I know that is why you will have me angry at you,” he retorted. He laughed sourly. “You make me angry so that you can force my mind toward you for that, at least.”

He had plucked truth out of her, truth she hid even from herself. Yes, when he had ceased to think of her day and night, when he grew careless after their marriage, she had forced anger on him to draw him back to her. She wanted suffering from him — pain, even, rather than nothing.

She saw him turn his head away from her, and the sight was dreadful to her. “I must save myself from him,” she thought. “I must rid myself somehow of love. It is too bitter for me.”

It was strange that at this moment when she longed to be free of him she thought of Madame Wu. All impulse as she was, she ran past him and through the courts, and did not stop until she found her sitting in her library smoking her little pipe.

“Mother!” she cried, “let me go free, too!”

Madame Wu heard this cry like an echo of her own soul. But she did not reveal her consternation. She put down the pipe on the table and gazed at her tall daughter-in-law. “Calm yourself,” she said. “Sit down and smooth the hair out of your eyes. While I think of it, let me tell you never to wear that robe again. You ought always to wear gay colors. They will lighten your darkness. Now, how can I let you go free?”

“I want to go out of this house — away from Tsemo,” Rulan said. She did not sit down in obedience to Madame Wu’s motioning hand. She stood, having heard nothing of what Madame Wu had said to her, and the two women looked at each other.

“I told you Tsemo is going away,” Madame Wu said. “Of him you will be free.”

“I want to be free of him forever,” Rulan cried. “I ought never to have married. I hate what I feel for him. I am a slave to it. He has me as he wants me, not as I want to be.”

“Is he to blame for this?” Madame Wu asked.

“Let me go away,” Rulan repeated.

Madame Wu unwillingly began again to like this strange angry girl. “Where will you go?” she asked. “What is there for a woman outside her husband’s house? Even if I free you from this house, can you be free? A woman without a husband — she becomes despised of all. Through man and child only is she made free.”

Rulan looked down at her with horror. “Tell me how to free myself,” she whispered.

Madame Wu felt a great welling pity for her. “Alas, my child,” she said gently, “I cannot tell you, for I do not know.”

“Have you never loved anybody?” the girl urged.

Madame Wu looked down and did not answer. She began to feel that Tsemo had somehow wronged this girl. But how could he know what she meant? He had been only himself, and could he help it if this was not enough for the girl? She began to perceive that she had been fortunate in not allowing herself to love Mr. Wu too well. At one time there had been some danger of it, when she was very young. But her own fastidiousness had been her guard. Rulan was not fastidious.

“If you had a child,” she said at last, “you might be free of him. At least you divide your love. The child demands much, and you are compelled to give it. Or it might be, if you have no child, that you could undertake study, or painting, or some such thing. You must divide yourself, my child. You have allowed all your powers to flow in the deep narrow river. Now dig yourself canals and rivulets and drain off your love here and there.”

“Forced labor,” Rulan said bitterly.

“If need be,” Madame Wu said gently. “But it is your only way to peace. You will surely die otherwise. For he will hate you, I promise you. He is trembling on the verge of hatred now. Therefore have I commanded him to go away from you for a while.”

Rulan wet her pale lips. “Are all men like him?” she whispered.

“Men are as like one another as minnows,” Madame Wu said in her pretty silvery voice. “It is when women discover it that they are free.”

“Then why do I love only Tsemo?” Rulan inquired shrewdly.

“Some trick of his looks,” Madame Wu said in the same pretty voice, “the way his eyebrows move, the turn of his mouth, the set of his shoulders in his coat, his hands—”

“How do you know?” Rulan whispered aghast.

Madame Wu laughed. “Heaven sets a hundred snares to carry on our kind,” she replied. She could not be angry at this girl. What was she but a poor trapped creature? Now that she saw how pitiably well Rulan loved Tsemo, she forgave her everything.

She put out her narrow hand and pulled Rulan’s hands apart and patted them one after the other. “No more unhappiness,” she said coaxingly. “I do not like anyone to be unhappy under our roof. See, I spend my life trying to make you all happy. What do you want, child, to make you happy here?”

Rulan could not but yield to the beautiful coaxing face, the kind and melodious voice. She allowed herself to be pulled along until she stood like a child at Madame Wu’s knees. “Let him go,” Madame Wu said in her soothing way. “Do not weep when he goes. Help him to pack his boxes, and bid him good-by gaily, however your heart weeps. Sleep heartily at night and do not wake. Let him be sleepless, child, not you.”

“But if I am sleepless without him?” Rulan asked naively.

Madame Wu laughed aloud, relishing this frankness. “Get up and take a walk in your court,” she said. “The night air is very cold now, and when you are cold your warm bed will put you to sleep, even though you lie down alone.”

The two women looked steadily into each other’s eyes. Madame Wu discerned the young hot soul, trembling with distress, and all the fountains of her pity broke open. Some loyalty deeper than that to the Wu family reached out and poured its waters of balm upon this soul, who was also a woman.

“You are free when you gain back yourself,” Madame Wu said. “You can be as free within these walls as you could be in the whole world. And how could you be free if, however far you wander, you still carry inside yourself the constant thought of him? See where you belong in the stream of life. Let it flow through you, cool and strong. Do not dam it with your two hands, lest he break the dam and so escape you. Let him go free, and you will be free.”

“I cannot live without love from him,” Rulan faltered.

“Then hang yourself tonight,” Madame Wu said calmly, “for I promise you he will not love you unless you let him first go free. Love only lives in freedom.”

“I could be a slave if he loved me,” Rulan said.

“You are not the slave,” Madame Wu exclaimed. “You are striving to be the master through your love. He feels it, he will not have it so. He must be free of you because you love him too much. Oh, foolish woman, how can I make you see how to be happy?”

Then Rulan fell at her knees. “I do see,” she sobbed. “I know what you mean — and — I am afraid to do it!”

But Madame Wu would not let her weep. “Get up — get up,” she said and she stood and lifted Rulan and made her rise and stand on her feet. “If you are afraid,” she said sternly, “then I am finished with you. Never come back to me. I have no time for you. Yes, I will let you go out of the house forever.”

Looking down at this exquisite, indomitable slender creature, Rulan felt her restless bitter heart grow still in her bosom. This solitary cool woman appeared now to be the only happy woman she had ever known. Her own mother had been fretful and discontented, and her sisters quarrelsome and restless, as all Shanghai women are restless. But this Madame Wu was as still and deep as a pool in a mountain stream.

“I will obey you, Our Mother,” she said humbly.

When she had gone Madame Wu reflected with quiet astonishment at herself that she had sent two sons out of her house because of two young women, neither of whom she loved, and that upon herself she had taken this double burden.

“I, who myself crave my freedom!” she exclaimed.

And, stupefied at her own contradiction, she gave herself over to Ying’s hands to be made ready for bed.

“I cannot explain myself,” Madame Wu said to Brother André the next day. She had told him of Tsemo’s going.

“Is explanation necessary?” Brother André asked with one of his smiles.

She had often observed this smile. It began in the thicket of his eyebrows and beard like light beginning to glow in a wood. The immensity of this man’s head, his whole size and bulk and hairiness, would once have terrified her. Now she was used to it.

“What are you thinking about?” he inquired in a strange and half-shy fashion.

“You often say we are all kin on this earth,” she replied, “and yet how can you explain your own appearance?”

“What do you find strange in me?” he asked, still in the half-shy voice.

“You are too big,” she said calmly, “and too hairy.”

“You cannot explain yourself — perhaps you can explain me?” Brother Andre retorted.

The lights in the wood were very bright now. She saw glimmers of white teeth in the darkness of his beard and points of laughter in the dark eyes.

“I have read that foreigners are hairy because they are nearer the animals,” she observed.

“Perhaps,” he replied. He opened his great mouth and let out a roar of laughter … In the depths of the night, when he lay alone on his bamboo pallet, he had thanked God that he had not met Madame Wu when she was a young girl. “I would not have answered for my soul, O God,” he said grimly through the darkness. But now he was master of his huge body and was only amused by her.

“In that case,” he now said to Madame Wu, “would it not be true that, having made me first, God improved upon his original design in making you?”

Now she laughed too, and the deep roar and the delicate silvery laughter mingled together. Out in the court a bondmaid was washing Madame Wu’s fine undergarments while Ying sat beside her to tell her what to do. Ying caught the bondmaid’s upward wondering look.

“Do not rub soap upon silk, you beggar’s bone!” Ying cried, “and keep your eyes on your work.” But she wondered too how that dark tall priest could make Madame, her mistress, laugh so heartily. She did not hide from herself her own wonder.

For it was true that in spite of her troubles in the house Madame Wu was coming to some sort of secret exquisite bloom. She met each day with relish and joy. Her only impatience was with the tasks of the house, and yet she controlled her own impatience and did each task with firm self-discipline. But Ying, who knew every breath of change in her mistress, knew, too, that she had no interest any more in the house.

She dared not think for one moment that this priest had an evil bond with Madame Wu. The lady was too rigorous for that. Besides, she was cooler than ever, more silvery, more clear in her look, more composed — and yet more gay. Ying watched her closely on one or two days when Brother André had been prevented from coming and had sent messages to tell her so, and Madame Wu was altogether indifferent. She sat as happily alone in her library as though her teacher were there. How could these things be explained?

The bondmaid snickered. “The Wu family also,” she whispered, “Have you heard?”

“Heard what?” Ying asked indignantly. “I do not listen to cats yowling.”

“I suppose you know that while our mistress sits learning of a priest, our master is going to flower houses?”

“He is not,” Ying declared.

She sat on a low bamboo stool, and she leaned over and slapped the maid on the cheek and her hand left a red mark. The girl’s eyes blazed. Then she turned her other cheek.

“Slap me again,” she said, “for it is true he goes and with old Kang, the two of them. What can you expect?”

Now Ying pretended that she had heard nothing, but the truth was she had heard a whisper of this before, although so great was the fear that all other servants had of her that they hushed themselves when she came into a room. “That old Kang,” she now thought to herself, “he is the mischief maker,” and she thought gloomily on the nature of all men, and how she would not put anything beyond even her own cook.

In the long quiet room Madame Wu had forgotten her own house. She sat gazing at Brother André’s brown rugged face, and he, entranced by her gaze, taught this soul as he had never taught another. It was so pellucid a soul, so wise and yet so young. She had lived in this house and had learned so much through her own living that she was ripe with understanding. Her mind was a crystal cup, the workmanship complete, the cup only waiting to be filled.

How could he help telling her everything he knew? Into the beautiful crystal vessel he poured all the learning that he had until now kept for his own possession, because until now none had cared to share it with him. He told her the history of the world, the rise of peoples and their fall, the birth of new nations. He told her of the discovery of electricity and of radium; he explained to her the waves of the air which carry man’s words and his music around the world,

“Have you the instrument for catching these words and this music?” she inquired today.

“I have,” he said. “I made such an instrument myself.”

“Will you bring it to me?” she asked eagerly.

He hesitated. “Alas, it is fixed with many wires into the walls. Can you — would you come to my poor house and see it?” he asked in return.

She pondered this. How could she go to a foreigner’s house, even though accompanied? She felt suddenly shy. “Perhaps,” she said, and turned her head away.

“Do not be disturbed,” he said. “There is nothing in me to disturb you. The man in me is dead. God killed him.”

With these strange words he went away, and she was comforted as she always was after he had gone. He put much into her mind. She sat thinking, half smiling, smoking her little pipe, her mind wandering over the world of which he told her.

“I wonder if I shall ever go beyond this city,” she mused in her heart. “I wonder if I shall ever sail on those ships and fly on those wings.”

For the first time she felt sorrowful at the shortness of life. Forty years only, at the most, could be left to her. What could she do in forty years? She had spent forty years already and had not stirred from her own doors.

“What do I know even about my own city?” she mused. “And here is our nation, set in the midst of these seas and mountains.” Thus the enchantment of the world took hold of Madame Wu.

Day upon day she came and went among her family, smiling and unseeing. They gathered at meals, and she sat in her accustomed place among them and saw none of them while she looked at all.

Upon this Ying broke rudely one day when she was cleaning her mistress’s jewels. The day was in midwinter, and Madame Wu had set some lilies into a dish of pebbles on the table, and the sunlight chanced at that moment to fall through the latticed windows upon lilies and jewels.

“See how alike they are, the jewels and the flowers, the pearls, the emeralds, the topaz, and the yellow and white and green of these flowers,” Madame Wu exclaimed.

Ying looked up from a bracelet in her hands. “Lady, you are so quick to see such things, and it is strange you do not see what is happening in your house,” she said.

“What do I not see?” Madame Wu asked half guiltily. She thought of her two daughters-in-law.

“Our lord,” Ying said.

“What of him?” Madame Wu asked quickly.

“Flower houses,” Ying said shortly.

“He would not!” Madame Wu said.

“He does,” Ying insisted. “Not that it is a great thing, since many men do it, but what if he brings something into the house which should not be here?”

Madame Wu thought deeply for a moment. “Ask our Second Lady to come here,” she said.

Ying rose, looking the bearer of important messages, and went away and Madame Wu took up her jewels and began to look at them. Every piece except the bracelets which her mother had given her at her wedding spoke of Mr. Wu. These jade earrings he had given her the morning after their wedding night to signify his pleasure in her. These emerald rings he had brought from a foreign shop in Shanghai, and she had never seen emeralds before. This diamond bird he had brought another time from Hong Kong, and she had not seen diamonds. The rubies he had brought from a distant province and the jade hair ornaments from Yunnan. There were small bits which had caught her own fancy when jewelers came to the house at her command. She had never bought much for herself. Two moth hairpins made of silver filigree and pale jade made her remember the night when the women had caught moths and impaled them on the door. She sat turning a pin over and over in her hand. It was filigree from Canton, very fine and quivering with delicacy. The antennae were hair-fine silver wires tipped with pinpoints of jade, and they trembled as though the moth were alive.

At this moment Ch’iuming came in. She was heavy with child now, and her face had changed. Her eyes were larger and her mouth more red.

Madame Wu held out the moth pins. “I will give these to you,” she said. “I use them no more.”

Ch’iuming put out her hand and took the pins and examined them silently. “They are too fine for me,” she said. “I would not know how to wear them.”

“Nevertheless keep them,” Madame Wu said. She turned over the jewels in the box with her forefinger. She had the wish to give Ch’iuming everything which Mr. Wu had given, but this she knew she must not. Then she saw two flowers made of rubies and pearls. The jewels were round and not polished too finely. “These too,” she said. “Take them. They will look well in your ears. I suppose he gives you jewels?”

“No,” Ch’iuming said slowly. “But I do not want jewels.”

Madame Wu took her little pipe and filled it and puffed it twice and laid it down again. A soft morsel of ash fell out on the table, and Ch’iuming leaned forward and brushed it into her hand.

“Now,” Madame Wu said, “does he go to flower houses?”

Ch’iuming’s face flushed red. “I hear he does,” she said simply. “But he does not tell me.”

“Can you not see for yourself?” Madame Wu inquired. “What is the measure of his feeling for you?”

Ch’iuming looked down. “It is too much for me, whatever it is,” she said. “Because I cannot love him.”

These words she said with a sad firmness. Madame Wu heard them, and then to her amazement she felt a great pity for Mr. Wu.

“Between you and me,” she said, “we have dealt him evil, I with my age, you with your youth. Have you tried to love him?”

Ch’iuming lifted her dark, honest eyes. “Oh, yes, I have,” she said simply. “Is it not my duty?”

“It is your duty, indeed,” Madame Wu retorted.

“So I know it to be,” Ch’iuming said. Then she added with the same humble sadness, “I obey him in everything. That at least I do.”

“Does he know you do not love him?” Madame Wu asked next.

“Yes, for he asked me and I told him,” Ch’iuming said.

“Ah, alas, that you should not!” Madame Wu exclaimed. “What would happen if all women spoke so truthfully to men?”

“I am stupid,” Ch’iuming said.

“So he goes to flower houses,” Madame Wu mused. Then she sighed heavily. “Well, there is no end to trouble between man and woman. When is the child to be born?”

“Next month,” Ch’iuming said.

“Are you glad?” Madame Wu asked her abruptly.

Ch’iuming, whenever she did not speak, fell always into the same pose, her hands clasped loosely on her lap, her eyes downcast, her shoulders drooping. When she was spoken to her hands tightened and she lifted her eyelids.

“It will give me something of my own in this house,” she said, and looked down again.

It seemed to Madame Wu that there was nothing more to be learned from her. “Go back,” she said. “I will speak to him and see where his heart is.”

Ch’iuming rose with her patient, simple air and bowed and went away. In a moment she came back again and held out her hand. The jewels shone on her brown palm. “I forgot to thank you for these,” she said.

“Do not thank me,” Madame Wu replied. “Wear them and that will be my thanks.”

“I do thank you, Elder Sister,” Ch’iuming said and again she was gone.

That day Madame Wu sent her excuses to Brother André, and in the late evening before the night meal she sent Ying to Mr. Wu to announce her coming. He received this message and himself came to her immediately.

“Let me come to you, Mother of my sons,” he said courteously.

She was surprised to see that he was thinner and less ruddy than he had been, and she blamed herself again. She rose and greeted him and they sat down, and the more she looked at him the more her own anxiety grew. He did not look well. His eyes, always so bright and roving, were now dull, and his full lips were pale.

“You look ill,” she said. “Are you ill?”

“Not at all,” he replied.

“But you are not well,” she insisted.

“Well enough,” he replied.

“The Second Lady?” she inquired.

He put up his hand. “She does her best for me.”

“But she is not good enough for you.”

Mr. Wu looked embarrassed. “I tell you, Mother of my sons, it is difficult for a young woman. You see, I am not so young.”

She decided to seize the truth by the neck. “But I hear you visit flower houses,” she said.

He shrugged and did not look a whit ashamed. “I go with old Kang sometimes, yes,” he admitted. “You see, it is easier simply to buy women without expecting them to love. Well, there is no pretense. The difficult thing is this pretense. I never pretended with you, Ailien, I did so love you. Now with this second one — I cannot either love or not love—” He continued to rub his head and looked dazed. “It is better simply to go to a flower house.”

“But next month your child is to be born,” she reminded him.

“Yes, well,” he rubbed his head again in the puzzled fashion. “The strange thing is, I do not feel it is mine. After all, you and I, we have the four boys.”

“It seems to me then that this Ch’iuming is no use in the house,” she said after a little time.

He rubbed his head again. “Well, no, perhaps she is not,” he agreed.

“I think you have not treated her well,” she said severely.

He looked apologetic. “I am very kind to her.”

“You have given her no gifts,” she declared.

He looked surprised. “That is true, I have forgotten. I forget her continually.”

Madame Wu was impatient. “Tell me, what is it you want of a woman?”

He looked somewhat embarrassed. “What woman?” he asked.

“Any woman,” she said.

Mr. Wu felt her impatience and, being anxious always to please her, he put his mind on the matter.

“Well,” he said, “I—” He felt he had begun badly and so he began again. “It is not so much what I want of a woman. It is what I — want. That is to say, I like to laugh — you know that. I like to hear something interesting — you used to tell me many interesting things. And you know I used to laugh at many things you told me. Well, all that—” He trailed off with this vagueness.

“I cannot go on amusing you forever,” she said sharply.

“No, of course not,” he agreed readily. “So, you see, I go to the flower houses.”

“What happens there?” Madame Wu asked. She was surprised to feel curiosity in herself.

“Nothing much,” he said. “We usually have something to eat and drink. We gamble while the girls play lutes or something.”

“Girls?” she repeated. “How many are there?”

“Five — six — whoever is free,” he said. “Kang and I— Well, we are kindhearted and they usually—” His voice trailed off once more.

“And then?” she inquired.

He began again with some effort. “Well, then, you see, the evening goes very quickly. The girls are full of stories and tricks.” He was unconsciously smiling.

“And do you stay all night?” she inquired.

“Not usually,” he said evasively.

She studied his bland face. There were lines in it, and she did not like them. The youthfulness which she had thought so permanent was fading. She sighed and felt her impatience increase.

“Would you like to bring one of these flower girls into the house?” she asked abruptly. “I would not approve it, but I ask your will.”

He looked surprised. “Why should I?” he asked.

“You really go there just to play,” she declared.

“Perhaps,” he agreed.

“How childish you are!”

“I am not as clever as you, Ailien,” he said with humility. “I could never read books. And now there is not much I need to do. Liangmo manages everything. Even with Tsemo and Fengmo gone, he can manage. I am not much needed.” He paused, and then he said with the humility which somehow she could not endure, “If there is anything you think I should do, I will do it. I want to do anything I should do.”

She had nothing to say. It was true that there was nothing for which he was needed. He sat there, handsome and kind and willing and childlike, and she had no heart to reproach him.

When they parted she saw with sadness that he was cheerful again because they had talked together. She knew that as long as she lived she could not be free from him. Through her body he had entered into her soul, too. It was not enough that she had never loved him. Love had nothing to do with responsibility.

“Oh, Heaven,” Madame Wu cried in a sort of strange agony, “am I to be responsible forever for him?”

She felt the wings of her soul, poised and widespread, now droop and falter earthward again.