“Are we not safe behind these walls?” Ch’iuming asked. She was always a little timid before Rulan, admiring while she feared her boldness.
“We are not safe from one another,” Rulan had retorted.
It was at this moment that the same thought had come to them both. Eyes stared into eyes.
“Why should we stay?” Rulan had asked.
“How dare we go?” Ch’iuming had asked.
And then they had begun to plot. Ch’iuming would ask first to be allowed to live in the ancestral village. To her old village she could not return, for it would appear that the Wu family had sent her out, and this even Madame Wu would never allow. But she would ask to go and live in a Wu village, and then when Madame Wu demurred that a young woman should not live alone in a farmer’s village, she would ask for Rulan. And when Rulan had to speak for herself, she would say that she wanted to begin a school for young children in the village as a good work for her widowhood. Everyone knew that widows should make good works. This conclusion they had reached after much talk, for Rulan wanted to go immediately and speak out for herself. But Ch’iuming pointed out the discourtesy of this, for how could Madame Wu, if she was unwilling, be put to the difficulty of refusing her daughter-in-law to her face? It was better for Ch’iuming to go first and take the brunt of refusal if it must come. Then there need be no difference between Madame Wu and her daughter-in-law.
This Rulan cried out against as being old-fashioned, but Ch’iuming declared it to be only decency, and so it was settled.
Now, Ch’iuming knew well enough where Fengmo was, but she had decided in her own mind that she would approach Madame Wu in his presence and would greet him only in Madame Wu’s presence, and never would she speak to him otherwise. So she dressed her child in a clean red dress and washed the little creature’s hands and face and painted a red spot between her brows and braided her hair and tied the ends with new red yarn, and with the child, who was now a very fair fat little girl; she appeared unannounced.
Thus Madame Wu looked to the door and saw Ch’iuming. It was late afternoon, for Fengmo had come home in the morning. The sun had left the court, but it was filled with mellow light, and in this Ch’iuming stood, her child in her arms. She looked almost beautiful, and Madame Wu saw this, to her dismay. Ch’iuming’s love, secret and unrequited though it was, had made her soft and alive. She looked quickly at her son to know what he saw. But he saw now nothing. Ch’iuming greeted Fengmo carefully.
“Ah, our Third Sir, you have come home,” she said.
Fengmo answered as simply, “Yes, yes. Are you well?”
“I am well,” Ch’iuming replied.
She looked at him once and then did not look at him again. Instead she said to Madame Wu, “Our Lady, may I ask a favor even now, and not be held too coarse for disturbing you?”
Madame Wu knew that Ch’iuming must have a purpose in coming at this time, and so she inclined her head. “Sit down and let the heavy child stand on her own feet,” she said.
So Ch’iuming, blushing very much, did as she was told. She asked for the favor, and Madame Wu listened.
“Very good,” she said, “very good.”
She comprehended at once the purpose that Ch’iuming had in coming here at this time. Ch’iuming wished to make clear to Madame Wu that she wanted to retire from this house now that Fengmo had come home, and to disturb nothing in the family. Madame Wu was grateful for such goodness.
When Madame Wu’s permission was given, Ch’iuming then asked for Rulan also. “Since the family mourning is over, and since her own mourning can never cease, she wishes to ease her sorrow by good works,” Ch’iuming said. “She wishes to make a school for the children of the farmers.”
At this Fengmo, who had been staring down at the floor, looked up astonished. “That,” he declared, “is what I have come home to do.”
Here was confusion! Ch’iuming was aghast and Madame Wu confounded.
“You said nothing of this, my son,” she exclaimed with silvery sharpness.
“I had not reached the point,” Fengmo declared. “After what happened, it became necessary to consider what work I could do.”
Madame Wu held up one narrow hand. “Wait,” she commanded him. She turned to Ch’iuming. “Have you any other request?” she asked kindly.
“None,” Ch’iuming replied.
“Then you have my permission to go, you and Rulan also,” Madame Wu said. “I will call the steward in a few days and bid him find suitable houses for living and school, and you shall go when you like after that. But you will need special furniture, better than what is usually in a farmhouse, as well as other goods. Decide what you need, and I will tell Ying to prepare it. You will need, two maids with you and a cook. The head cook can send one of the undercooks with you.”
At this Fengmo spoke again. “If they live in the village they should not live too far above the others there, or they will be lonely.”
Ch’iuming threw him a soft quick look and did not speak. She was surprised that he could know this, who all his life had lived in a rich house. How did he know what common people felt? Then she put the question away. It was not for her ever to ask a question about him.
She rose and lifted up her child and thanked Madame Wu and went away. Rulan waited for her, and as soon as she heard the permission she and Ch’iuming began to plan their new lives with more joy than could have been possible to them even yesterday.
In the room which Ch’iuming had left, Madame Wu spoke to her son. “Explain your heart to me,” she commanded him.
He rose and walked restlessly to the open door and stood looking out. The quietness of coming night was in the walled space. Here the seasons came, even as they did over the whole world.
“It is necessary for me to devote myself,” he said. “So much Brother André taught me. If I am not to devote myself to one thing, it must be to another. After I left here I cast about for devotion. Religion is not for me, Mother. I am no priest. As far as a man can go, Brother André taught me, but not beyond.”
“Good, my son,” Madame Wu said, and waited.
He sat down again. “The way was shown me entirely by accident,” Fengmo went on. He drew out of his pockets some foreign tobacco and a short foreign pipe and filled it and began to smoke. Madame Wu had not seen these before, but she would not allow her curiosity to interrupt him.
“There was in the city where I lived over there a laundry man of our own race,” Fengmo told her. “I took my clothes to him every few days to be washed.”
Madame Wu looked surprised. “Did he wash clothes for others?” she asked.
“For many,” Fengmo replied. “It was his trade.”
“Do you tell me he even washed the clothes of the foreigners?” Madame Wu inquired next with some indignation.
Fengmo laughed. “Somebody has to wash clothes,” he said.
But Madame Wu did not laugh. “Certainly our people ought not to wash the soiled garments of foreigners,” she said. She was displeased and forgot what Fengmo was about to say.
He tried to soothe her. “Well, well—” he said. Then he went on, “The man was not from our province but from the south. One day when I went to fetch my clothes—”
“You fetched your own clothes!” Madame Wu repeated. “Had you no servant?”
“No, Mother, over there none of us had servants.”
She restrained her curiosity again. “I see it is a very strange country and you must tell me more of it later. Go on, my son,” she commanded him.
“I went to fetch my clothes, and the man brought me a letter from his home,” Fengmo went on. “Mother, he had been away from his home for twenty years, and he could not read the letters that came to him. Nor could he write. So I read and wrote his letters for him, and he told me that in his village none read or wrote, and they had to go to the city to find a scholar. I had never understood the pity of this until I came to know him. He was a good man, Mother, not stupid but very intelligent. ‘I
f I could only read and write for myself,’ he would say, ‘but I am like one blind.’ I went back to my room and I looked out of the window and saw the great buildings of the college and the thousands of students coming and going, learning many things, and the one poor old man could not read his letter from home. Then I remembered that this is true in our villages, too. None of our own people can read and write, who live on our land.”
“Why should they?” Madame Wu inquired. “They do not come and go. They only till the fields.”
“But Mother, Mother,” Fengmo exclaimed, “to know how to read is to light a lamp in the mind, to release the soul from prison, to open a gate to the universe.”
The words fell upon Madame Wu’s ears and lashed her heart. “Ah,” she said, “those are the words of him who taught you.”
“I have not forgotten them,” Fengmo said.
How could she forbid Fengmo after this, and how could she tell him why he must not live outside his own house?
“Rulan will be just the one to help me,” he said eagerly. “I had not thought of her before. And Linyi shall help me too, and we will forget ourselves.”
He was on his feet again. “You know, Mother, if I succeed here, in our own villages, it might be a thing that would spread everywhere. How great a good that would be—”
She saw his thin young face light with something of the light that had burned eternally in André’s eyes. She would not put it out.
“My son, do what seems good to you.” So she answered him.
Madame Wu lay awake in her bed as now she did very often. This neither displeased nor alarmed her. The young must sleep, for they have work to do and long life ahead. But the old need not sleep. The body, knowing that eternal rest is not far off, may lie awake while it can.
It seemed to her, as she lay awake, that the house was alive in the night as it was not in the day. She let her mind’s vision roam over the many courts. Elderly cousins lived in the distant and outer courts, and younger second and third cousins, here not to stay, but only because for the moment they had no other shelter, and these wide roofs could cover them, too, for a while. From the courts where Jasmine lived with Mr. Wu she turned her eyes quickly. Well, she knew what life it was. She had no judgment for it, only weariness. The old man’s body lived on, fed and solaced, and the young woman grew fat and lazy and was ready for sleep, day as well as night. Jasmine was no trouble in the courts. She was barren. No child was conceived, and Madame Wu was content to have it so. Jasmine’s was wild blood, and it was well to keep it in her own veins. She did her duty by Mr. Wu and, having had her pleasure in years before, she was glad to please the old man who now gave her jewels and silks and dainties of every kind to eat, and laughed at her and fondled her. All her life Jasmine had been a wayside flower and subject to any wind that passed. Now her happiness was to know that behind these high walls no wind could touch her. Even though the old man were to die, she would live on, her place secure in his house. There was nothing more for her to fear as long as she lived.
As for Mr. Wu, what his mother had begun in his youth, his young concubine now finished. Whatever Madame Wu had fostered in him had faded away, like a light dimmed because it fed on no fuel. He grew gross and heavy, eating too much and drinking often but always with Jasmine. He went no more to flower houses, for Jasmine gave him all her arts. Even his old need for the companionship of his friends left him, and seldom did he go to teahouses to hear the news and discuss the town’s gossip. Jasmine gave him both, and she had all from the servants. There in the court where they lived so closely together that almost they lived alone, they were ribald and gay and drunken and happy, two pieces of meat and bone, and content so to be. The name of Mr. Wu was seldom heard now even in his own house. In malice a servant whispered it to another, and that was all.
With her divining mind Madame Wu knew all of this, and she went no more to the court that had once been her home. Never once did Jasmine come to her court. The two lived as far apart as ever they had lived before Jasmine had come.
Pondering upon this, Madame Wu asked herself, as she lay between her silken quilts, if she had failed in her marriage. Was there anything she should have done that she had not? She put the question to André, but for once there was no answer ready in her memory. Instead she saw the face of Old Gentleman against the velvet black of her brain. It was as clear as it had ever been, neither older nor younger. His face had always been thin, the golden skin drawn smooth over the fine bones beneath. His skull must even now be a thing of beauty as he lay in his grave, its lines cleaned and polished by time.
“I fear I have not done well by your son, my father,” she said sadly, within her own self.
She felt, as she gazed at the kind good old face, that perhaps if she had not separated herself from Mr. Wu on her fortieth birthday, he might not have sunk to what he was now. But out of her youthful memories Old Gentleman spoke to her.
She remembered well the day. They had been reading together, for he had sent for her, and she found him with his finger in a book. He had pointed to the lines when she came in and she had read:
“To lift a soul above its natural level is a dangerous act. Souls, like springs, have their natural sources, and to force them beyond is against nature and therefore a dangerous act. For when the soul is forced, it seeks its own level again and disintegrates, being torn between upper and lower levels, and this is also dangerous. True wisdom it is to weigh and judge the measure of a soul and let it live where it belongs.”
Her eyes and Old Gentleman’s had met as they met now across the many years since he had been in this house.
“Had I not separated myself,” she mused—and could imagine no further. What she had done was inevitable. Her being she had subdued to duty for how many years, and for how many years had her soul waited, growing slowly, it is true through the performance of duty, but growing in bondage and waiting to be freed.
Strange that now in the middle of the night while the house lay silent, she thought with anxiety of Liangmo, her eldest son. Why should she be anxious for him, who of all her sons was the most content? Him, too, she must discover when she could.
And in Fengmo’s court she did not pause. Fengmo was a man. He had disciplined himself as only a full-grown man could do. He had not yielded up his soul. Upon this comfort her mind drifted toward sleep, like an empty boat upon a moonlit sea.
“Now my English books,” Fengmo commanded.
Linyi ran to fetch them out of the box. There were two armfuls of them. “How many you have!” she exclaimed.
“Only my best ones,” he said carelessly. “I have boxes yet to come.”
He knelt by the bookshelves against the wall and fitted in the books as she brought them. Outwardly calm, his face constantly smiling, inwardly he was deep in turmoil and pain. He felt now that he could never sleep again, and he was feverish to settle his things, to put all his possessions into their places, to put his traveling bags out of sight, not to be used again.
“Must you put everything away tonight?” Linyi asked.
“I must,” he replied. “I want to know that I have come home to stay.”
She was happy to have these words said, and too young to dream why it was he said them without looking at her. Indeed, when he said them he saw a face very different from hers. He saw Margaret’s face, blue eyes, brown hair, and the skin so white and smooth that he would never forget the touch of it. Would he ever be sorry that he had done what he did that day in the forest across the sea? For he had forced himself to let her go as soon as he had taken her in his arms.
“I can’t go on,” he had said.
She had not spoken. She had stood, her blue eyes fixed on him. There was something strange and wonderful about blue eyes. They could not hide what was behind them. Black eyes were curtains drawn down, but blue eyes were open windows.
“I am married,” he had told her bluntly. “My wife waits for me at home.”
She knew something about Chinese marria
ges. “Was she your own choice or did your family arrange it?”
He had waited a long time to answer. They sat down under the pine tree. He had hugged his knees in his arms and hid his forehead on his hunched knees, thinking, feeling for the truth. It would have been easy, and partly true, to say, “I did not choose her.” But when he prepared to say these words, Brother André came into his mind.
“To lie is a sin,” Brother André had taught him simply, “but it is not a sin against God so much as a sin against yourself. Anything built upon the foundation of a lie crumbles. The lie deceives no one so much as the one who tells it.”
He had not dared to lie to her, lest some final day the structure of their love crumble between their hands, and their love be buried in reproach.
“I was not forced to marry,” he said. “Let us say—I chose.”
She had sat motionless after that, listening to him, while he tried to explain to her what marriage meant in his family.
“With us marriage is a duty not to love or to ourselves, but to our place in the generations. I know that my mother has never loved my father, but she has done her duty to the family. She has been a good wife and mother. But when she was forty years old she retired from wifehood and chose another for my father. This grieved us, and yet we all knew the justice of it. Now she is free to pursue her own happiness, still within the house, and around her we all stand to support her and do her honor. I have my duty, too, in the family.”
He knew in some strange distant fashion that he was wounding Margaret to the soul.
“I want to marry for love,” she said.
Had he been free, not only of Linyi but of all the generations of Wu in the centuries gone and all the generations of Wu yet to come, he would have said to her, “Then let us marry each other. I will send Linyi away.”
But he was not free. The hands of his ancestors were fastened on him, and the hands of his sons and grandsons not yet born beckoned to him. He owed her further honesty.
“I know myself,” he went on. He lifted his eyes not to hers but to the landscape before them, to the river, its ships and harbor, and to the span of a great bridge between the banks.
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