I sat watching him, bewildered and a little frightened. Could it be that he was right, after all?
That night I laid the jade ornaments sorrowfully in their silver case and put the satin garments away. I had been taught all wrong, I began to realize. My husband was not one of those men to whom a woman is as distinctly an appeal to the sense as a perfumed flower or a pipe of opium. The refinement of beauty in body was not enough. I must study to please him in other ways. I remembered my mother, with her face turned to the wall, and her weary voice, saying,
“The times have changed.”
Still I could not bring myself easily to the unbinding of my feet. It was really Mrs. Liu who helped me. She was the wife of a teacher in a new foreign school. I had heard my husband speak of Mr. Liu as his friend. She sent word the day after my return that if it pleased me she would call the following day.
I made great preparations for she was my first caller. I directed the servant to buy six kinds of cakes as well as watermelon seeds and sesame wafers and the best Before-the-Rains tea. I wore my apricot pink satin and placed pearls in my ears. Secretly I was very much ashamed of the house. I feared she would think it ugly and wonder at my taste. I hoped that my husband would not be at home so that I might at least place the chairs and table more formally and thus show distinctly which was the place of honor.
But for once he did not go out. He sat reading and glanced up with a smile as I entered the room a little nervously. I had planned to be seated when the guest came and as the servant ushered her in, to rise and bow her to the best seat. But with my husband there I had no chance to arrange the room, and when the bell rang, my husband himself went to the door. I was most chagrined and wrung my hands and wondered what to do. I heard a cheerful voice then, and I could not help peeping into the hall. I beheld a strange thing. My husband had taken the guest’s hand and was shaking it up and down in the most peculiar manner. I was amazed.
Then suddenly my astonishment and all thought of the guest dropped from me, for I looked at his face. O my husband, never had thy face worn that look for me, thy wife! It was as if at last he had found a friend.
O My Sister, had you been here you might have taught me what to do! But I was alone. I had no friends. I could only ponder and grieve within myself and wonder what I lacked to please him.
And the while she was there I examined my guest closely to see if she were beautiful. But she was not beautiful or even pretty. Her face was large and red and good-humored, and her eyes, though kindly and crinkling with smiles, were round and bright like glass beads. She wore a coat of plain gray cloth over a black unflowered silk skirt, and her feet were shod like men’s. Her voice was pleasant, however, and her speech came swiftly and readily, and her laughter was warm and quick. She talked a great deal with my husband, and I sat listening with drooping head. They spoke of things of which I had never heard. Foreign words flew back and forth between them. I understood nothing except the pleasure on my husband’s face.
That night I sat silent with my husband after the evening meal. My mind returned again and again to the look on his face during the visit. Never before had I seen on it an expression like that—so eager, so alight! He was full of words for her—he poured them out as he stood before her. He remained in the room throughout her visit as though she were a man.
I rose and went to his side.
“Yes?” he asked, looking up from his book.
“Tell me about the lady who called to-day,” I asked.
He leaned back in his chair and looked at me reflectively.
“What about her? She is a graduate of a big western college for women called Vassar. She is clever and interesting, as one likes a woman to be. Besides, she is rearing three magnificent boys—intelligent, clean, well cared for. It does my heart good to see them.”
Oh, I hate her—I hate her! Oh, what can I do? Is there only one way to his heart?—She was not pretty at all—
“Do you think her pretty?” I whispered.
“Well, yes, I do,” he answered stoutly. “She is healthy and sensible and walks on sound, steady feet.”
He stared into space. I thought desperately for a few minutes. There was only one way for women. How could I—and yet my mother’s words were, “You must please your husband.”
My husband sat staring thoughtfully across the room. I did not know what was in his mind. But I knew this; although I wore peach-colored satin and had pearls in my ears, although my hair was smooth and black and shining in cunningly arranged coils, although I stood at his shoulder so close that a slight motion of his body would have brought his hand to mine, yet he was not thinking of me.
Then I hung my head lower and gave myself into his hands. I renounced my past. I said,
“If you will tell me how, I will unbind my feet.”
VII
WHEN I LOOK BACK now, I realize that my husband’s interest began in me that evening. It seemed as though before this we had nothing to talk about. Our thoughts never met. I could only watch him wondering and not understanding, and he never looked at me at all. When we spoke it was with the courtesy of strangers to each other, I with shyness towards him, he with careful politeness that overlooked me. But now that I had need of him he saw me at last, and when he spoke he questioned me and cared to hear my answer. As for me, the love that had been trembling in my heart for him steadied into adoration then. I had never dreamed that a man could stoop so tenderly to a woman.
When I asked him how I could unbind my feet, I thought, of course, that he would merely give me directions from his medical knowledge. And so I sat astounded when he himself fetched a basin of hot water and a roll of white bandage. I was ashamed. I could not endure having him see my feet. No one had seen them since I was old enough to care for them myself. Now, when he set the basin on the floor and knelt to take my feet, my whole body burned.
“No,” I said faintly. “I will do it myself.”
“You must not mind,” he answered. “I am a doctor, you remember.”
Still I refused. Then he looked me steadfastly in the face.
“Kwei-lan,” he said gravely, “I know it costs you something to do this for me. Let me help you all I can. I am your husband.”
Without a word then, I yielded. He took my foot, and gently he withdrew the shoe and the stocking and unwound the inner cloth. His expression was sad and stern.
“How you have suffered!” he said in a low, tender voice; “how wretched a childhood—and all for nothing!”
The tears came into my eyes at his words. He was making useless all the sacrifice, and even demanding a new sacrifice!
For when my feet had been soaked and bound again more loosely, intolerable suffering set in. Indeed, the unbinding process was almost as painful as the binding had been. My feet, accustomed to constriction, gradually stretched a little, and the blood began to circulate.
There were times in the day when I tore at the bandages to unfasten them and bind them more tightly to ease me; and then the thought of my husband and that he would know at night made me replace them with trembling hands. The only slight respite I could get was to sit on my feet and rock back and forth.
No longer did I care how I appeared before my husband, or look in the mirror to see if I were at least fresh and neat. At night my eyes were swollen with weeping, and my voice rough with sobs I could not control. Strange that when my beauty could not move him, my distress did! He would comfort me as though I were a child. I clung to him often without realizing in my pain who or what he was.
“We will endure this together, Kwei-lan,” he said. “It is hard to see you suffer so. Try to think that it is not only for us but for others, too—a protest against an old and wicked thing.”
“No!” I sobbed, “I do it only for you—to be a modern woman for you!”
He laughed and his face lighted a little, as it had when he talked to that other woman. This was my reward for pain. Nothing seemed quite so hard afterwards.
And indeed, a
s the flesh grew more healthy, I began to know a new freedom. I was young, and my feet were yet sound. Often in older women bound feet will mortify and sometimes even drop away. But mine were only numbed. Now I began to walk more freely, and the stairs were not so difficult. I felt stronger all over my body. One evening I ran without thinking into the room where my husband was writing. He looked up in surprise, and his face broke into a smile.
“Running?” he exclaimed. “Ah, well, we are over the worst then, and the bitterness is eaten.”
I looked at my feet in surprise.
“But they are not yet as large as Mrs. Liu’s,” I said.
“No, they never can be,” he replied. “Hers are natural feet. Yours are as large as we can get them, now.”
I felt a little sorrowful that my feet could never be as large as hers. But I thought of a way. Since all my little embroidered shoes were useless now, I determined to get some new leather ones like Mrs. Liu’s. The next day, therefore, I went with a servant to a shop and bought a pair of shoes the length I wished. They were two inches longer than my feet, but I stuffed the toes hard with cotton. When I put on the shoes no one could tell I had had bound feet.
I was anxious to have Mrs. Liu see them, and I asked my husband when I might return her call.
“I will go with you to-morrow,” he said.
I was surprised that he would be willing to go on the street with me. It is certainly not good custom, and it embarrassed me not a little, but I have grown more used now to his doing strange things.
We went the next day therefore, and my husband treated me most kindly in her presence. True, he confused me greatly once or twice, as for instance, when he made me precede him into the room where Mrs. Liu was. I did not know his meaning at the time. After we came home, he explained that it was the western manner.
“Why?” I asked. “Is it because, as I have heard, that men are inferior to women over there?”
“No,” he answered, “that is not true.”
Then he explained it to me. It is grounded, he said, in an old system of courtesy which began in ancient times. This was very astonishing to me. I did not know that there were ancient people except ours, that is, civilized people. But it seems that foreigners also have a history and a culture. They are therefore not wholly barbarian. My husband promised to read me some books about them.
I felt happy that night when I went to bed. It was interesting to be a little more modern. For not only had I worn my leather shoes that day, but I had not painted my face or put ornaments in my hair. I looked very much like Mrs. Liu. I am sure my husband noticed it.
It seemed that, once I was willing to change, a complete new life poured in upon me. My husband began to talk to me in the evening, and I found his conversation very exciting. He knows everything. Yoh! The queer things he has told me about the outer countries and their inhabitants! He laughed when I exclaimed,
“Oh, funny—oh, strange!”
“No more strange than we are to them,” he said, for some reason greatly amused.
“What!” I cried in fresh astonishment. “Do they think we are funny?”
“Of course,” he replied, still laughing. “You should hear them talk! They think our clothes are funny and our faces and our food and all that we do. It does not occur to them that people can look as we do and behave as we do, and be wholly as human as they are.”
I was astounded to hear this. How could they consider their curious looks and clothes and behavior as human as ours? I answered with dignity,
“But we have always done these things and had these customs and looked as we do, with black hair and eyes—”
“Exactly! So have they!”
“But I thought they came over here to our country to learn civilization. My mother said so.”
“She was mistaken. In fact, I believe they come over here thinking to teach us civilization. They have a great deal to learn from us, it is true, but they don’t know it any more than you realize what we have to learn from them.”
Certainly it was all very novel and interesting, what he had to say. I never grew weary of hearing about the foreigners, and especially did I like to hear of all their marvelous inventions: of turning a handle and getting hot or cold water out of it, and of a stove with no fuel that one could see, and yet having heat—self-coming water and self-coming heat, these are called. And how amazed was I at his stories of machines on the sea and of others flying in the air and floating under the water and many like marvels!
“You are sure it is not magic?” I asked fearfully. “The old books tell of miracles of fire and earth and water but they are always the magic tricks of creatures partly faërie.”
“No, of course it is not magic,” he replied. “It is all quite simple when you understand how it is done. It is science.”
That science again! It made me think of my brother. For the sake of that science he is still in these foreign countries, eating their food and drinking their water to which his body is not accustomed by birth. I became very curious to see this science and know what it looks like. But when I said this my husband laughed a great deal.
“What a child you are!” he cried, teasing me. “It is not a thing you can handle or touch or take in your hands to examine like a toy.”
Then seeing that I perceived nothing of what he meant, he went to the bookcase and brought forth some books with pictures upon the pages, and he began to explain to me many things.
Thereafter, every evening he taught me concerning this science. No wonder my brother became entranced of it so that he would not heed even his mother’s desires, but would go across the Peaceful Sea in search of it. I was enchanted of it myself and began to feel myself growing marvelously wise. So much so that at last I felt I must tell someone, and having no one else, I told our old cook-woman.
“Do you know,” I asked her, “that the world is round and that our great country is, after all, not in the middle, but only a patch of earth and water on the skin, together with the other countries?”
She was washing the rice in the small pond in the kitchen yard, but she stopped shaking the basket and looked at me suspiciously.
“Who says this?” she demanded, in no hurry to be convinced.
“Our master,” I said firmly. “Now will you believe me?”
“Oh,” she replied doubtfully, “he knows a great deal. Still, you can tell the world is not round just by looking at it. See, if you climb to the top of the pagoda on the Hill of the North Star, you can see for a thousand miles of mountain and field and lake and river, and it is all as flat as sheets of dried bean curd, except for the mountains, and no one could call them round! As for our country, it must be in the middle. Else why did the wise ancients, who knew everything, call it the Middle Kingdom?”
But I was eager to proceed.
“More than that,” I continued, “the earth is so large that it takes the whole length of a moon to reach the other side, and when it is dark here the sun is over there giving light.”
“Now I know you are wrong, my mistress,” she cried triumphantly. “If it takes a moon of days to get to those other countries, how can the sun do it in an hour when he spends a whole day in traveling the short space here between Purple Mountain and the Western Hills?”
And she fell to shaking the basket of rice in the water again.
But really I could not blame her for her ignorance; for of all the curious things my husband told me the most curious is this, that the western peoples have the same three great lights of heaven that we have—the sun, the moon, and the stars. I had always thought that P’an-ku, the creator god, had made them for the Chinese. But my husband is wise. He knows all things, and he speaks only what is true.
VIII
HOW MAY I PUT into words the beginning of my husband’s favor towards me, My Sister? How did I know it myself when his heart stirred?
Ah, how does the cold earth know when the sun at spring-tide draws out her heart into blossoming? How does the sea feel the moo
n compelling her to him?
I do not know how the days passed. Only I knew that I ceased to be lonely. Where he was became my home, and I thought no more of my mother’s house.
During the lingering hours of the day in his absence I pondered over all my husband’s words. I remembered his eyes, his face, the curve of his lips, the casual touch of his hand against mine as he turned the page of the book on the table before us. When night came and he was there before me, I glanced at him secretly, and I fed my heart upon his looks as he taught me.
Day and night I thought of him until, like the river in spring-time flowing richly into the canals empty with the drought of winter, like the river flowing into the land and filling everything with life and fruition, so did the thought of my lord become to me, filling my every loneliness and need.
Who can understand this power in a man and a maid? It begins with a chance meeting of the eyes, a shy and lingering glance, and then suddenly it flames into a fixed and burning gaze. There is a touch of fingers at first quickly withdrawn, and then heart rushes to heart.
But how may I tell even you, My Sister? It was the time of my great joy. These words I speak now are scarlet words. On the last day of the eleventh moon I knew that when the rice harvest came, in the fullness of the year, my child would be born.
When I told my husband that I had fulfilled my duty towards him in conception, he was very happy. He gave formal notice to his parents first and then to his brothers, and we received their congratulations. My own parents of course were not immediately concerned in the matter, but I determined to tell my mother when I visited her at New Year.
Now began a most difficult time for me. Hitherto I had been person of little importance in my husband’s family. I had been merely the wife of one of the younger sons. I had had almost no share in the family life since we moved away from the great home. Twice I had gone at stated seasons to pay my respects and serve tea to my husband’s mother, but she had treated me negligently, although not unkindly. Now suddenly I became as a priestess of destiny. Within me I bore the hope of the family, an heir. My husband was one of six sons, none of whom had male offspring. Should my child be a son, therefore, he would rank next to my husband’s eldest brother in the family and the clan, and he would be the heir of the family estates. Oh, it is the sorrow of a mother that her son is hers but the first few brief days! Too soon he must take his place in the great family life. My son can be mine such a short, short while! O Kwan-yin, protect my little child!