Pavilion of Women: A Novel of Life in the Women's Quarters (12 page)

“It is impossible to tell what this girl is,” Madame Wu murmured to herself.

Did she want to take into her house so unknown a being? She could not answer this. She went back after a while to the library. The girl was sitting there alone, looking frightened in the big, shadow-filled room. She held her hands clasped on her knees. The meal was finished, and Ying had taken away the bowls. When she saw Madame Wu she rose, and relief beamed on her face.

“What shall I do now, Elder Sister?” she asked. The name came to her lips trustfully and warmed Madame Wu against her will. She was wary of giving affection too soon.

“What do you usually do at this hour?” she asked.

“I always go to bed as soon as I have eaten at night,” the girl replied. “It wastes candlelight to sit up after it is dark.”

Madame Wu laughed. “Then perhaps you had better go to bed,” she said. She led the way into the room where the narrow bed lay waiting. “There is your bed, and beyond that door yonder is the room where you may make yourself ready.”

“But I am ready,” the girl replied. “I washed myself clean before I came here. I will take off my outer clothes and that is all.”

“Then I will see you tomorrow,” Madame Wu replied.

“Until tomorrow,” the girl replied. “But I beg you, Elder Sister, if you want anything in the night, please call me.”

“If I need you I will call,” Madame Wu said, and went out of the room to her own.

Long after she had gone to bed herself she could not sleep. Toward midnight she rose and went into the other room and lit the candle and looked at the girl while she slept. She had not tossed nor even stirred. She lay on her right side, one hand under her cheek. She breathed easily, her mouth closed, her face rosy. In her sleep she was even prettier than when she was awake. Madame Wu observed this. She observed also that the girl did not move or snore. The covers were drawn neatly to her waist. She slept in her cotton undergarments, but she had unfastened her collar so that her round neck showed and part of her breast. One breast Madame Wu could see quite clearly. It was young and round and firm.

She slept deeply, still without stirring. This was good. Madame Wu herself had always been a light sleeper, waking instantly if Mr. Wu so much as turned in the bed and then unable to sleep again. But this girl would sleep soundly all night and wake fresh in the morning. Madame Wu shielded the candle with her hand and bent near to the girl’s face. Still the same sweet breath! She straightened and went back to her own room and pinched out the candle between her thumb and finger and lay down again.

She was awakened before dawn by small sounds from the other room. The bamboo bed creaked, something rustled. She woke, as she always did, to the full, and lay listening. Was the girl preparing to run away at this hour? She rose and put on her robe and lit the candle and went out again. The girl was sitting on a stool brushing out her long hair. She was dressed, even to her shoes and white cotton cloth stockings.

“Where are you going?” Madame Wu asked.

The girl was startled by the sound of her voice and dropped the big wooden comb she was using. Her black hair hung about her face.

“I am not going anywhere,” she said. She got to her feet and stared at Madame Wu. Her dark eyes shone out of the flying shadows of her hair. “I am getting up.”

“But why are you getting up at this hour?” Madame Wu asked.

“It is time to get up,” the girl said in surprise. “I heard a cock crow.”

Madame Wu laughed sudden and unusual laughter. “I could not dream to myself why you were getting up, but of course you are a country girl. There is no need, child, for you to get up here. Even the servants will not be awake for an hour yet. And we do not rise for an hour after that.”

“Must I go back to bed?” the girl asked.

“What else can you do?” Madame Wu asked.

“Let me sweep the rooms,” the girl said, “or I will sweep the court.”

“Well, do as you like,” Madame Wu replied.

“I will be quiet,” the girl promised. “You go back, Elder Sister, and sleep again.”

So Madame Wu went back to her bed, and she heard the sound of a broom which the girl had found in the corridor. She used it on court and floor, and her footsteps were light and guarded as she moved about. Then, without knowing, Madame Wu fell asleep again, and when she woke it was late. The sun was shining across the floor, and Ying stood waiting by the bed.

She rose quickly and the rite of dressing began. Ying did not mention the girl, and Madame Wu did not speak. The rooms were silent. She heard nothing.

This silence grew so deep that at last Madame Wu broke it. “Where is the girl?” she asked of Ying.

“She is out there in the court, sewing,” Ying replied. “She had to have something to do, and I gave her some shoe soles for the children.”

From the slight scorn in Ying’s voice Madame Wu understood that she did not think more highly of this girl for wanting to be busy, like a servant. Madame Wu did not speak again. She would not be led by Ying’s likes and dislikes.

Instead she ate her breakfast and then went out into the court. There the girl sat on a small three-legged stool, in the shade of the bamboo. She was sewing, her fingers nimbly pushing the needle through the thick cloth sole. On her middle finger she wore a brass ring for a thimble. She rose when she saw Madame Wu and stood waiting, not speaking first.

“Please sit down,” Madame Wu said. She herself sat down on one of the porcelain garden seats.

Now as it happened this seat was placed so that she sat with her back to the round gate of the court, but the girl sat facing the door. She had no sooner taken her seat on the stool again and lifted her needle, when she looked up and saw someone in that gate. Madame Wu saw her large eyes look up and fall and the peach-colored flush on her cheeks deepened. Madame Wu turned, expecting from this behavior to see a man, perhaps the cook.

But it was not the cook. It was Fengmo, her third son. He stood there, his hand on one side of the entrance staring at the girl.

“Fengmo, what do you want?” Madame Wu asked. She was suddenly conscious of a strange anger because he had come upon her unexpectedly. He was the son whom, she knew herself, she least loved. He was willful and less amiable than Liangmo or Tsemo, and less playful than little Yenmo. When he was small, he had preferred the company of servants to the company of the family, and this she had thought was a sign of his inferiority. She had treated him outwardly exactly as she treated the others, but inwardly she knew she loved him less. Doubtless he had felt this difference, for he seldom came to her, after he was fifteen, unless she sent for him.

“Fengmo, why have you come?” she asked again when he did not answer. He continued to stare at the girl, and she, as though she felt this, lifted her eyelids and glanced at him and let them fall again.

“I came to see—to see—how you are, Mother,” Fengmo stammered.

“I am quite well,” Madame Wu replied coldly.

“There was something else, too,” Fengmo said.

Madame Wu rose. “Then come into the library.”

She led the way and he followed, but neither of them sat down. Instead Fengmo moved his hand toward the girl. “Mother,” he said, “is that—the one?”

“Fengmo, why have you come here to ask me?” Madame Wu said severely. “It is not your affair.”

“Mother, it is,” he said passionately. “Mother, how do you think it is for me? My friends will laugh at me and tease me—”

“Is that what you came to tell me?” Madame Wu inquired.

“Yes,” Fengmo cried. “It was bad enough before. But now that I have seen her—she is so young and my father—he’s so old.”

“You will return at once to your own court,” Madame Wu said in the same cold voice. “It was intrusion for you to come here without sending a servant first to find if it was convenient for me. As for your father, the younger generation does not decide for the elder.”

She was accustomed to Fengmo’s stubbornness. She was therefore surprised when this stubbornness wavered. She saw his handsome face flush and quiver. Then without a word he turned and left the room and the court without one backward look.

But Madame Wu was deeply annoyed that these two had seen each other. In spite of many old customs which she had broken, and she did not hesitate to break them when she chose, she had steadfastly followed that one which separated male from female at an early age. In this house her sons had been separated from all women at the age of seven. She had not even rebuked the menservants for their ignorant replies to the questions of the boys. Once she had heard Fengmo ask the steward, “Why am I forbidden to play any more with my two girl cousins?”

“Boys and girls cannot play together or they will have sore feet,” the steward had said half jokingly.

Madame Wu, usually so quick to correct ignorance, had let this pass.

Now Fengmo had seen this girl before she had taken her place in the house and the girl had seen him. Who could tell what fire would blaze out of this? She walked back and forth in the library. Each time she passed the open door she could see the girl’s head bent industriously over the shoe sole and her hand pulling the needle in and out. Her mind was suddenly quite made up. The matter must be decided at once. She would keep this girl. But the girl must understand exactly what her duty was. She went out with a swifter step than was usual to her and sat down again.

“I have made up my mind,” she began abruptly. “You shall stay in this house.”

The girl looked up, held the needle ready to pierce the cloth, but she did not move to take the stitch. She stood up in respect to Madame Wu.

“You mean that I please you?” she asked in a low and breathless voice.

“Yes, if you do your duty,” Madame Wu said. “You understand—you come here to serve my own lord—to take my places—in certain things.”

“I understand,” the girl said in the same half-faint voice. Her eyes were fastened on Madame Wu’s face.

“You must know,” Madame Wu went on, “that our house is in some ways still old-fashioned. There is no coming and going between the men’s courts and the women’s.”

“Oh, no,” the girl agreed quickly. Her hands fell into her lap, but her eyes did not move.

“In that case,” Madame Wu said in the strange abrupt way which was not at all like her usual way of speaking, “there is no reason why the matter should not be concluded.”

“But ought I not to have a name?” the girl asked anxiously. “Shall I not have a name in this house?”

There was something pathetic and touching in this question, and Madame Wu found it so. “Yes,” she said, “you must have a name, and I will give it to you. I will name you Ch’iuming. It means Bright Autumn. In this name I set your duty clear. His is the autumn, yours the brightness.”

“Ch’iuming,” the girl repeated. She tasted the name on her tongue. “I am Ch’iuming,” she said.

M
R. WU DID NOT
come near Madame Wu, and she let it be so. After the many years, she knew what was going on in his mind. Had he been resolute against the girl, he would have come to tell Madame Wu so, with temper and decision, possibly even with laughter. But that he had stayed away proved to her that he was not unwilling for the girl to come into his court, and that he was secretly ashamed before Madame Wu because he was not unwilling. She knew him well enough to know that he might even be inwardly disgusted with himself, though in a degree too small to help him against his inclination. In short, he was what Madame Wu knew him to be, of a nature able to know what were the qualities of a great man, to admire and wish for all of these qualities, and yet hamstrung in his soul by the demands of his body.

Thus, as he was never able to resist a well-seasoned dish at the table, so he would not be able, however he longed for perfection, to deny himself the pleasure of a young woman. He was not austere, although he had been able for years to be satisfied with Madame Wu as his wife. But Madame Wu without conceit knew that, had she been less beautiful and less conscientious as a wife, he might have been led elsewhere. She had been careful to keep him satisfied in all things. Did he feel a desire for knowledge concerning any matter to be found in books, she informed herself and then told him. Did he mention a curiosity concerning foreign things, she learned and let him know. In all their years he had not an unsatisfied desire. But she knew without pain that this was because she had studied his wishes and when they were vague, by careful discourse she helped them to emerge clearly, even to himself, and when they were sharp and immediate she wasted no time in satisfying him. She had been a good wife.

Nor had she been discontented with him. She had no sudden disappointment in him. At first she had taken his willful curiosities as the stirrings of a mind impeded because his mother had indulged him from the moment he was born. Old Lady had never allowed Old Gentleman any power over their only child, unduly precious because he was the one left alive out of several births. At first Old Lady had quarreled openly and violently when Old Gentleman wished to discipline his son. This occurred when the boy was seven years old. Until that time, after the custom of all such families, Old Gentleman had allowed the boy to live in his mother’s courts. But at seven, he told Old Lady, it was time the boy came into his own court.

One excuse after another did Old Lady then put out. First the boy had a weak throat and she must have him where he could be watched at night, and next he had a small appetite and must be coaxed at meals. When Old Gentleman grew stern she wept, and when he was angry, she was more angry. But Old Gentleman was harder than a rock, and she was compelled to yield. When their child was nine years old he had been moved into a small room next to his father’s bedroom, and Old Gentleman undertook the teaching and discipline of his only son.

Alas that this small room had also a side door through which the handsome, willful boy could creep at night to his mother! Old Gentleman patiently and tenderly instructed his son to no avail. For instead of the self-discipline which he taught, she, out of the excess of her love, helped him play when he should have been studying. She gave him rich and delicate foods, and when his young belly was overstuffed and ached she taught him to puff an opium pipe to relieve the pain. It was only the boy’s own health and restlessness which saved him from this opium smoking. As it was, by the time he was twenty, Old Gentleman perceived that Old Lady had won over him, and with a last hour of admonition he had yielded up his son.