Pavilion of Women: A Novel of Life in the Women's Quarters (18 page)

Fengmo looked surprised. He never expected his mother to have any knowledge out of books, and Madame Wu knew this and enjoyed surprising him.

“You look pale,” she said suddenly. “Are you taking your tonic of deers’-horn powder?”

“It tastes worse than rotten fish,” Fengmo objected.

Madame Wu smiled her pretty smile. “Then don’t take it,” she said comfortably. “Why take what you dislike so much?”

“Thank you, Mother,” Fengmo said, but he was again surprised.

Madame Wu leaned forward, and her hands fell clasped into her lap. “Fengmo,” she said, “it is time we talked about your life.”

“My life?” Fengmo looked up and stopped whirling the cap.

“Yes,” Madame Wu repeated, “your life. Your father and I have already discussed it.”

“Mother, don’t think I will consent to your choosing a wife for me,” Fengmo said hotly.

“Of course I would not,” Madame Wu said quickly. “All that I can do is to bring certain names to you and ask you if you like any of them. Naturally I have considered your tastes, as well as the position of the family. I have put aside any thought of such a girl as the Chen family’s second daughter, who has been brought up in old-fashioned ways.”

“I would never have such a girl,” Fengmo declared.

“Of course not. But there is another difficulty,” Madame Wu said in her calm way. “The girls are also demanding much today. It is not as it was when I was a girl. I left all such things in my mother’s hands, and my uncle’s who took my dead father’s place. But now the girls—the sort you would want, Fengmo—do not want a young man who cannot speak at least one foreign tongue.”

“I study some English in school,” Fengmo said haughtily.

“But you cannot speak it very well,” Madame Wu replied. “I do not know that language myself, but certainly I hear you stammer and halt when you make those sounds. I do not blame you, but so it is.”

“What girl will not have me?” Fengmo asked angrily.

Madame Wu rode to her goal upon this anger as a boat rides the surf to the shore. “Madame Kang’s third daughter, Linyi,” she said, and while she had seen no interest pass between them, Fengmo’s present anger was enough. He was immediately interested.

“That girl!” he muttered. “She looks too proud. I hate her looks.”

“She is really very handsome,” Madame Wu retorted. “But that is not the important thing. I do not speak of her except as one of others. If Linyi, who knows our family and position, still objects to you, can we look higher?”

“You could send me away to a foreign school,” Fengmo said eagerly.

“I will not do that,” she replied in her pretty voice that was nevertheless as inexorable as sun and moon. “There will be war over the whole world in a few years from now. At such a time all my sons must be at home.”

Fengmo looked at her astounded. “How can you tell such things, Mother?”

“I am not a fool, though all the world around me are fools,” Madame Wu said quietly. “When certain steps are taken and none prevents them, then more steps are taken.”

The boy was silent, his eyes fixed on his mother’s face. They were large and black like hers, but they had not the depth of her eyes. He was still too young. But he did not speak, as though he were struggling to comprehend the things of which she spoke.

“I have heard there is a foreign priest here in the city,” she went on, “and he is a learned man. It is possible that for a sum he would teach you to speak other languages. For this are you willing? Foreign languages may serve you well some day. It is not of marriage only that I think. The times ahead are due for change.”

Her voice, so clear, so musical, was nevertheless full of portent. Fengmo loved and feared his mother at the same time. To him she was always right, and the few times that he had disobeyed her she had not punished him, but he was always punished nevertheless. Slowly and hardly he had learned that what she said carried wisdom. But, being a boy, he demurred for a moment.

“A priest?” he repeated. “I do not believe in religions.”

“I do not ask you to believe in religions,” she said in reply. “It is not of that we speak.”

“He would try to convert me,” Fengmo said sullenly. “Little Sister Hsia is always trying to convert everybody in the house. Whenever she passes me she hands me a gospel paper.”

“Do you need to yield to conversion?” Madame Wu asked. “Are you so weak? You must learn to take from a person that which is his best and ignore all else. Come, try the priest for a month, and if you wish then to stop his teaching, I will agree to it.”

It was the secret of her power in this house that she never allowed her will to be felt as absolute. She gave time and the promise of an end, and then she used the time to shape events to her own end.

Fengmo began to whirl the cap slowly again between his hands. “A month then,” he said. “Not more than a month if I do not like it.”

“A month,” Madame Wu agreed. She rose. “And now, my son, we will go to the night meal together. Your father will have begun without us.”

In the Wu household men and women ate at separate tables. Thus at the threshold of the great dining room Fengmo parted from his mother and went to one end, where his father and brothers and the men cousins were already seated, and Madame Wu walked with her usual grace to the tables where the women were seated. All rose at her approach. She saw at once that Ch’iuming had taken her place among them. The girl sat shyly apart from the others and held a small child on her knee. With this child still in her arms she rose and managed to shield her face with the child. But Madame Wu had taken a full look at her before she did this. The girl was grave, but that was natural in a strange household. It was enough that she was here.

“Please sit down,” Madame Wu said courteously to all and to no one. She took her own place at the highest seat and picked up her chopsticks. Meng had been serving the others, and Madame Wu put her chopsticks down again. “Proceed for me, please, Meng,” she said. “I have been busy all day with household matters, and I am a little weary.”

She leaned back smiling, and in her usual way she gave a word to each of her daughters-in-law, and she spoke to Meng’s little boy whom the nurse held. The child was fretting, and Madame Wu took her chopsticks and chose a bit of meat and gave it to him. Then she spoke directly to Ch’iuming.

“Second Lady,” she said kindly, “you must eat what you like best. The fish is usually good.”

Ch’iuming looked up and flushed a bright red. She rose and gave a little bow, the child still clutched in her arms. “Thank you, Elder Sister,” she said in a faint voice. She sat down and did not speak again. When a servant put a bowl of rice before her she fed the child first.

But by this kind address Madame Wu told the whole house that Ch’iuming’s place was set, and that the life of the family must now include this one added to it. All heard the few words, and a moment’s silence followed them. Then servant spoke to servant and nurse to child to cover the silence.

Madame Wu accepted the food given her and began to eat in her delicate slow fashion. The little grandson, wooed by the gift of the meat, now clamored suddenly to come and sit on her knee. Meng reproved him tenderly. “You with your face and hands all dirty!”

Madame Wu looked up as though she had been in a dream. “Is it me the child wants?” she asked.

“He is so dirty, Mother,” Meng said.

“Certainly he is to come to me,” Madame Wu said. She put out her hands and took the heavy child and set him on her knee. Then with her instinctive daintiness she took up a pair of clean chopsticks and found bits of meat in the central bowls and fed them to the child. She did not speak, but she smiled at each mouthful.

The child did not smile back. He sat as though in a dream of content, opening his little mouth and chewing each bit with silent pleasure. It was Madame Wu’s usual effect on children. Without effort she made them feel content to be near her. And she took content from the grandchild. In him her duty to the house was complete, and in him, too, her secret loneliness in this house was assuaged. She did not know she was lonely, and had anyone told her that she was, she would have denied it, amazed at such misreading. But she was too lonely for anyone to reach her soul. Her soul had outstripped her life. It had gone out far beyond the four walls within which her body lived. It roamed the world, and reached into the past and climbed toward the future, and her many thoughts played about that constant voyaging. But now and again her soul came home to this house. It came back now. She was suddenly fully aware of this child and of his meaning. The generations marched on, hers ending, his beginning.

“Son of my son,” she murmured and continued to put bits of meat into his small red mouth, opened for what she gave. When he was fed she gave him to his mother.

But before the others had finished she was finished, and she rose begging them to continue, and walked slowly out of the room. As she passed Mr. Wu and her sons they greeted her, half-rising from their seats, and she smiled and inclined her head and went on her way.

That night again she slept the whole night through and did not wake.

But to Ch’iuming the half-hour of Madame Wu’s presence was her marriage ceremony. The night had left her confused. Had she pleased him or not? Mr. Wu had not spoken one word to her, and he had left her before dawn. She had slept after that until noon. No one had come near her all afternoon except a woman servant. Then she had been bidden by Ying, at evening, to join the family meal. She had hastened to make herself ready for this, and when the time came she had slipped into the dining room late, and had quickly taken the child from his nurse. He had not cried. But children never cried with her. In the village she had cared for many babies of farm mothers. One by one the ladies who were now her relatives had greeted her, half carelessly, half shyly, and she had only bent her head a little in reply. Nor could she eat.

But after Madame Wu had left the room, she suddenly felt ravenous and, turning herself somewhat so that she did not face the others, she ate two bowls of rice and meat as quickly as she could.

When the meal was over she stood waiting in deepening shyness while Meng and Rulan went away. But Meng in her gentle kindness stayed a moment to speak to her. “I will come to see you tomorrow, Second Lady,” she said.

“I am not worthy,” Ch’iuming replied faintly. She could not meet Meng’s eyes, but she was comforted and happy. She lifted her eyes, and Meng saw the timid desolate heart.

“I will come and bring my child,” she promised.

And Ch’iuming went out with the women and children, hiding herself among them from the men. But they looked at her, each in his own secret fashion.

That night Mr. Wu came early to the peony court, and she was not yet in bed. She was sewing upon her unfinished garments when she heard his step. She rose as he entered and turned her face away. He sat down while she stood, and he cleared his throat, put his hands on his knees, and looked at her.

“You,” he began, not calling her by name, “you must not be afraid of me.”

She could not answer. She clung to the garment she held with both hands and stood like stone before him.

“In this house,” Mr. Wu began again, “there is everything to make you happy. My sons’ mother is kind. There are young women, my sons’ wives, and young cousins’ wives, and many children. You look good-tempered, and certainly you are obliging. You will be very happy here.”

Still she did not answer. Mr. Wu coughed and loosened his belt a little. He had eaten very heartily, and he felt somewhat breathless. But he had not finished what he wished to say.

“For me,” he went on, “you have only a few duties. I like to sleep late. Do not wake me if I am here. In the night, I like tea if I am wakeful, but not red tea. I am hot in blood, and cannot have two quilts even in winter. These and other things you will learn, doubtless.”

The garment dropped from her hand. She looked at him and forgot her shyness. “Then—I am wanted?” She put the question to him out of her longing to find shelter somewhere under Heaven.

“Certainly,” he said. “Have I not been telling you so?” He smiled, and his smooth handsome face lit from a sudden heat from within him. She saw it and understood it. But tonight she would not be afraid. It was a little price to pay, a very little price to pay a kind man, for a home at last.

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

“Lady, Lady!” she cried.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Madame!”

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

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