Pavilion of Women: A Novel of Life in the Women's Quarters (48 page)

But Fengmo was too young to grant this, and at last the older farmers came to Madame Wu to beg her to command her son to forbear, and Madame Wu received them. She was scrupulous always to receive courteously those beneath her. Superiors she had none, and her equals she could deny; but lesser folk never. So she received them in state in the main hall of the house, and she sent for Mr. Wu to come and take his usual place to the right of the central table while she sat on the left, so that the house should be honorably presented to the landfolk. Mr. Wu came in with dignity. He wore robes of wine-colored satin under a black velvet sleeveless jacket, all new because he was grown too fat for his old ones. Madame Wu was amazed at his fatness, for some time had passed since she had seen him except sitting at the table, and now less and less often did he appear even at the family table. He would die earlier than need be, she thought, looking at his jowls, and then she thought again that it was better to die happy, even though earlier, than to die less happy, even though later. She held her peace, therefore, and gave no warning.

When the two elders were seated the farmers came in dressed in their blue cotton garments and with new straw sandals on their feet. They brought small packages of cakes wrapped in heavy brown paper and tied with straw string, and under the string they had put pieces of red paper for good luck. These they presented and Mr. Wu received them, protesting properly that they need not show so much courtesy.

Then, standing humble before the gentry, the farmers made known their difficulty. Madame Wu listened and so did Mr. Wu, though with less interest. Mr. Wu agreed heartily with the farmers. “These brothers are entirely right,” he announced. “My son is behaving like a fool, and I shall command him to return at once to my house and leave you in peace.”

But Madame Wu knew all sides of the matter, and she had no intention of allowing Mr. Wu to act in ignorance. So she first agreed with him and then disagreed with him mildly. Thus she spoke:

“My sons’ father speaks very wisely and must be obeyed. You, good brothers, are all over forty years of age. Certainly you should not be compelled to do what is against your wish. But it may be there are some among you in the village who are young and who would benefit from a little learning—enough, say, so that you could cast up your accounts and see that you are not cheated in the markets.”

She turned to Mr. Wu and said in her voice, which grew only more soft with age, “How would it be if we forbade our son to teach any who are over forty years of age unless that one wishes it himself?”

This was a fair compromise, and so it was decided. From then on the older farmers had their freedom from Fengmo if they wished, and none needed to fear that he would be held in less favor for rents and seeds if he wished to remain unlettered.

But Fengmo laughed when Madame Wu told him of the visit of the old farmers. “I have a way to win!” he cried, and he welcomed the difficulties. The upshot of his work was that even some of the old farmers began to want learning when they saw how the younger ones profited by it, and be sure that Fengmo lost no chance to make it known when a young farmer gained by knowing his letters, so that he could read a bill and check an account. It became the fashion at last to know letters, and other villages asked for schools, and Fengmo was so busy that months went by without Madame Wu’s knowing how he did.

All this was very well for Fengmo, but it brought some disturbance into the house. Ch’iuming and Rulan moved into the village to live. This made Madame Wu uneasy, for Fengmo pressed them both into the service of his schools and how could Ch’iuming hide her love from Fengmo? Madame Wu grew exceedingly anxious, for, although Ch’iuming and Fengmo were of the same age, they were not of the same generation, and a very evil scandal would gather about the Wu name if there were any cloud about these two. But even while Madame Wu was anxious Fengmo came in one night to see her.

She received him willingly, for she knew by now that Fengmo had no time for anything except what he held important. She had a moment’s fear when she saw him, lest he came to tell her what she did not want to hear about Ch’iuming. It was indeed about her, but this is what he said. He sat down squarely on his chair, put his hands on his knees and began at once. His voice was steady while his eyes were rueful. She could not but admire his looks as he spoke. The fresh village air had made him red and healthy, and the success of his work had made him bold.

“Mother,” he began, “I do not know how to tell you what I must, but not knowing, I will begin anywhere.”

“Begin, my son,” she said.

He rubbed his hands over his short hair. When he had come home it was long and smoothly combed, but now he had cut it as short as any farmer’s, and it was a brush of black.

“Is it about Ch’iuming?” Madame Wu inquired.

“How do you know everything?” he asked, surprised.

“I have my ways,” she said. “Now, my son, what have you to say?”

The breach was made and he could speak. “You know, Mother, that no woman can ever move me.”

She smiled at his youth, and something in his serious young face touched her at the very center of her heart. Ah, perhaps the old ways of love and marriage were wrong—who knew? She leaned forward a little.

“I can remember—” So she began and then checked herself. She could remember a day when she was no older than Fengmo, and she had wakened early in the morning and had looked at the sleeping face of her husband, and had known that never could she love him. And yet she had done her duty and was content and her life had had its own ways of happiness.

But the very youth in Fengmo’s face stopped her. She leaned away again. No, she could not speak of herself to her son.

“What shall we do?” he asked.

“Let us consider what is most sensible,” she replied.

But he had already a plan. “I ask your permission to take Linyi with me, and we will live in the country, too.”

This he said, and while Madame Wu could not but see the wisdom of it, she was sad to think of another empty court under the roof. Then she was pleased that he thought of Linyi as a safety for himself, and the more she considered it the more she became willing to do what he asked.

“I will agree to this,” she said at last, “with one condition, and it is that when she gives birth to your children, you return here for the time of the birth and the few months after. The grandchildren should be born under our own roofs.”

To this Fengmo agreed, and within a few days after that Fengmo and Linyi closed the doors of their court and moved into an earthen-walled house in the village. And Madame Wu was content to have it so. She pondered for a while whether she should not send for Ch’iuming and give her advice and some solace of praise, but she decided that she would not. The young woman must learn by life, as all must learn, what she could have and what must be denied to her.

S
O CH’IUMING LEARNED. BUT
in the year after this one, when Linyi was about to give birth to her first child, a very strange circumstance came about. It was the year of the great retreat, when the enemy from the East Ocean islands won much territory and drove many from their lands and their homes. Through the city and the countryside these wanderers now passed, and since the town where the Wu family lived was in that region, many passed by there.

Among those who lingered was an elderly woman, a widow, who with her son and his wife and children stayed at the inn longer than the others. This son was now her only child, and he told the innkeeper why they lingered.

“My mother lost a daughter here many years ago,” he said. “Is there any way of finding lost children?”

“Was the child not dead?” the innkeeper asked. The guests were well-to-do, and he was courteous in what he said.

“She was not dead but cast away by my grandmother, who had a fierce temper and was angry because my mother gave birth to three girls one after the other,” the man replied.

“How came you here in that year?” the innkeeper asked.

“It was an evil year in our region near the northern capital,” the man said. “The harvests failed, and we moved to these parts where food was plentiful. On the way, which was here, my mother gave birth.”

The innkeeper mused over this. “It must have been in this very inn then,” he said, “because it is the only one in our town and I have been here for my lifetime and my father before me.”

“It was in this inn, my mother says, and that is why we have lingered. My two sisters are dead, and my mother still yearns over the lost child.”

“I will go and tell this to our gentry,” the innkeeper said. “If anyone knows, Madame Wu knows it.”

So the innkeeper put on his best clothes, and one evening after the guests had all been served he sent word to Madame Wu that he had a question to ask her if she would receive him.

She replied that she would, for the innkeeper’s family had been old servants of the Wu family. An hour later he stood before her in the main hall, and this time she did not ask Mr. Wu to come to hear the man, for it was at a time inconvenient to him. Mr. Wu did not like to be disturbed after his night meal, and yet it was the only time when the innkeeper could come, so great was the rush of his guests now in wartime.

When he stood before Madame Wu he told his tale. She listened, piecing all she knew together. She did not tell this man her thoughts. Instead she said, “Let the mother come to visit me and tell me everything.”

“The very best thing, Our Lady,” the innkeeper declared and went back with his message.

The next day the son brought his mother. Madame Wu received the mother in her court, and the son waited outside in the main hall.

Now, Madame Wu could not know what sort of woman her visitor would be. She had expected a woman of common origin, but as her visitor came in, leaning upon a maidservant’s arm, she saw this was no common woman, but a lady, though no longer young.

She gave greeting and asked the lady to be seated in the place of honor, which the lady refused until she was pressed. But at last both ladies were seated, tea poured, and everything prepared for talk, and Ying and the maid were at a distance too great to hear but not to be called.

After all courteous extra words had been said what the lady had to tell was this:

“We have come at some distance out of our way westward. Certainly safety lies very far from here, and we have come some two hundred miles farther than we need to come. But I have my reasons.”

She wiped her eyes, one after the other, on a silk handkerchief.

“Tell me what you wish to tell me,” Madame Wu said kindly.

Thus encouraged, the lady went on and told of the casting away of her child. “I know my child did not die. She was so healthy—more healthy than any of my others. And the child’s father was not willing to have her killed, even at his mother’s demand. He was a good man with an evil mother. Alas, he died before she did, and he feared to tell me anything against his mother’s will.”

She paused to weep again. “How we were punished! One child after another died, girl and boy alike, until only my youngest son is left. Now I seek the child I lost, and that is why I have come so far.”

“You know the child was not killed?” Madame Wu asked.

“I know that,” the lady answered, “for even while I lay in bed after the birth I heard the son pleading with the mother, and she agreed at last that the child should not be killed, but only cast away over the city wall.”

“Was the child wrapped in a red silk coat?” Madame Wu asked.

The lady stared at her. “In my old red coat,” she gasped. “I thought if she were wrapped in it, she might be seen by someone.”

Madame Wu rose and went to the chest. There folded among her own garments was the one Ch’iuming had long ago given her to keep. “Here is the coat,” she said.

The lady’s face turned the color of lead. “It is the coat!” she whispered. She clutched it in her hands. “But the child?”

“Living,” Madame Wu said.

And then she told the story of Ch’iuming and how the girl had come into this house, and the lady listened, weeping and impatient and yet fearful. It was hard to tell that Ch’iuming had not pleased Mr. Wu and hard to tell how Madame Wu had allowed her to go to the village to live, though she valued her. The lady was grateful and yet reproachful, too, and at last Madame Wu said, “Let us go to the village to see for ourselves and you will see that your child has been well cared for.”

So without more delay she called for sedans, and the two ladies went at once to the village.

Now, Madame Wu had long been saying she must visit the village and see for herself what Fengmo was doing, but what with cold winter, hot summer and a slight ague she had, and her own love of being alone with her books, she had not gone. What she saw today amazed her. The village was clean and prosperous as it had never been, and the people looked healthier than ever they had. Children had clean noses and brushed hair, and the villagers pointed proudly at a new earthen building as the school. Fengmo had told her much and she had listened and said, “Yes, yes, my son,” but she had not comprehended all he had done.

Beside the school was his own house, and since a messenger had run ahead to tell of their coming, there all was ready for them. Linyi was with child, and this had been told to Madame Wu, but she was not prepared for Linyi’s healthy looks. Her cheeks were red, her lips red without paint, and she had put on flesh as well as motherhood. The curled ends of her hair she had cut off, and this pleased Madame Wu as much as anything. But more perhaps she was pleased by the change in Linyi’s manners. The girl was respectful and prompt, and her lazy ways were gone.

So they went into Fengmo’s house and sat down, and Fengmo was sent for, and when he was come the whole story was told again, and Ch’iuming and her child were sent for and Rulan came with her.

The moment that Ch’iuming came in mother and daughter looked at each other and knew who they were. No two could have faces so alike who were not made one of the other. All who watched burst into laughter at so magic an ending to a strange story, and if Madame Wu was the most silent, yet she was the most pleased.