“And do you stay all night?” she inquired.
“Not usually,” he said evasively.
She studied his bland face. There were lines in it, and she did not like them. The youthfulness which she had thought so permanent was fading. She sighed and felt her impatience increase.
“Would you like to bring one of these flower girls into the house?” she asked abruptly. “I would not approve it, but I ask your will.”
He looked surprised. “Why should I?” he asked.
“You really go there just to play,” she declared.
“Perhaps,” he agreed.
“How childish you are!”
“I am not as clever as you, Ailien,” he said with humility. “I could never read books. And now there is not much I need to do. Liangmo manages everything. Even with Tsemo and Fengmo gone, he can manage. I am not much needed.” He paused, and then he said with the humility which somehow she could not endure, “If there is anything you think I should do, I will do it. I want to do anything I should do.”
She had nothing to say. It was true that there was nothing for which he was needed. He sat there, handsome and kind and willing and childlike, and she had no heart to reproach him.
When they parted she saw with sadness that he was cheerful again because they had talked together. She knew that as long as she lived she could not be free from him. Through her body he had entered into her soul, too. It was not enough that she had never loved him. Love had nothing to do with responsibility.
“Oh, Heaven,” Madame Wu cried in a sort of strange agony, “am I to be responsible forever for him?”
She felt the wings of her soul, poised and widespread, now droop and falter earthward again.
X
BUT MR. WU WENT direct from Madame Wu to the flower house to which she had objected. He had first followed Mr. Kang there somewhat against his will and certainly against his conscience. Then he had dealt with both and had come off the victor. His will had yielded entirely so that now he looked forward to his innocent visits there, and his conscience was reduced to confusion and temporary silence.
Ch’iuming he did not understand. She was not as wise as Madame Wu, whom he steadfastly adored as a priest might adore the Kwanyin whom he daily served. Ch’iuming was neither goddess nor woman. When he treated her as a goddess, she was bewildered. Besides, she was not quite a goddess. When he treated her as a woman, he felt he shocked her, and then he was confused and could proceed no further. Matters had come to such a pass between them that he did not know how to treat her, and so he left her alone.
The experience had made him more than ever adore Madame Wu, who had been able, as he now perceived, to be alternately goddess and woman, but never the two at the same time. But, since she resolutely refused to return to being a woman, and was apparently to be continually a goddess, he had been reduced to finding a woman elsewhere.
This he had found in the person of a small round rollicking girl in the House of Peony Flowers on the Street of the Blind Lute Player. The house was an old one, outwardly a teahouse, but also a gambling place and a brothel. The girls were always clean and young and cheerful. Mr. Kang assured him that he had for years been a client there and had never found any other sort of girl in it. Moreover, the place made a policy of not being grasping. If a man wished only to look at a girl while he ate and drank, it was possible not to be committed further. If he wished her only as a companion for a guest, that too could be. Indeed, to purchase more took some arrangement, for there was always a waiting list of clients. But it had not been hard for Mr. Wu to ascend this list at once, thanks to his position as the head of a great family.
Now he entered the gaily decorated hall with an air of a familiar and was greeted on all sides. The proprietor called to his assistant in a loud voice.
“Tell Jasmine that Mr. Wu is here.”
Mr. Wu proceeded amiably to an inner room and was at once served with tea and then in a few minutes with wine and a bowl of small dumplings by way of light refreshments. He ate these, and before he was half through Jasmine came into the room.
She had been perfuming her long black hair when she was called, and now she came in with it in two coils over her ears. Since she was named Jasmine, she used the same flower scent and made the most of it, so that the scent became her own, and she had usually one or two of those flowers tucked into the coils of her hair. Her face was powdered almost a pure white, and her lips were red and her eyes round and very dark. She was plump and her lips were always smiling. She came running in on her little feet and perched on the arm of Mr. Wu’s chair and rubbed her scented cheek against his.
He pretended not to notice her, and she pouted. “I am hungry,” she whimpered. He dipped his porcelain spoon into the dumpling soup and fed it to her gravely, and she leaned forward like a child to receive it. Between them in silence they finished the food, and he pushed his chair from the table and she slipped to his knee.
“What have you been doing today?” Mr. Wu inquired.
She examined her scarlet fingernails. “Oh—waiting for you—that is all I do.”
“I cannot be here all the time,” Mr. Wu said. “I have business. I am a man of affairs. I have the shops and the markets and the lands all to superintend. They can do nothing without me.”
“You work too hard,” she complained. “It seems to me your sons ought to help you.”
“Oh, my sons,” he grumbled, “they think only of themselves and their own families. Two of them have actually gone away, and the eldest one— Well, he tries, but I cannot trust everything to him.”
He enjoyed the pressure of her round little body against his shoulder. He liked the jasmine scent of her hair. Even her breath was scented. He remembered Madame Wu’s question. Did he want to bring her into the house? Left to himself, certainly it would be a pleasure, but he could not persuade himself to add to the house of his ancestors a flower girl. The shade of his father forbade it.
As though she knew his thoughts, Jasmine nestled closer and slipped her arm about his neck. “I wish I could come and live with you,” she said. “I would be very good. I would not trouble any of the great ladies. I would stay by myself all the time until you came.”
“No, no,” he said hastily. “I don’t want you there. I like to come out of the house and visit you here. If you were to come to the house, you would become a part of it, and I would have nowhere to go for my own pleasure. A man must be himself somewhere.”
She was quite ready for this. She had an old mother who had been a flower girl in her youth, and had taught her to take care of herself. “A concubine, if possible,” old Lotus had said, “but if not that, then a house of your own.”
“Couldn’t you buy a little house for me, Mr. Wu?” she asked. “I would never let any man come in but you, and I would wait for you all day and all night. Then you could be yourself whenever you liked.”
Mr. Wu had already considered this possibility. He did not like the assurance with which his name was now called out when he came to this house of flowers. He was, after all, the head of the house of Wu and a man higher than any among the gentry of the city.
But Madame Wu kept the family accounts, and how was he to ask her for so large a sum as it would require to take a house for Jasmine? “You see, my small flower,” he said tenderly, “my sons’ mother is a wonderful woman. She keeps the accounts. What would I tell her if I wanted to take a house for you?”
“Couldn’t you sell a piece of your land and not tell her?” Jasmine asked. She sat up and looked at him pleadingly. She had a childish little voice that went straight into his heart.
“I have never deceived her,” Mr. Wu said, troubled.
“Does she know about me?” Jasmine asked in astonishment.
“Approximately,” Mr. Wu replied.
“What is approximately?” Jasmine asked.
“It means somewhat.”
“How can she know somewhat?” Jasmine asked again. “Either she knows or she doesn?
??t know.”
“Let us then say she knows,” Mr. Wu replied. “It is always safer to say that she knows than that she doesn’t.”
Jasmine tried again. She hid her face on his shoulder. “I am afraid I have happiness in me,” she whispered. “That is why I want the house. I can’t have a child here.”
Mr. Wu was alarmed. He took her from his knee and set her on her feet, and she stood there before him, her hands over her face. “Now,” he said sternly, “there were others before me. You were no virgin, young as you are.”
She took her hands from her face. The powder was undisturbed. “But my amah can prove to you that there have been none since you came, and this is within the last three months. You came before that.”
She turned away and wiped her eyes with the edges of her sleeves. “Never mind.” Her childish voice was sad. “It is my fate. Girls like me—sometimes it happens in spite of ourselves. Especially when we really love a man. That is my mistake.”
Had she insisted, had she demanded, he would have risen and gone away perhaps never to return. But his heart was soft.
“Now,” he said, “whether it is my fault or not, you know there are ways of purging yourself. Here is something to help you.”
He put his hand in his purse, but she would not take the money he held out to her. She pushed his hand away with her two little ones. “No, please,” she said. “I will bear the child. I want to bear him.”
“You must not,” Mr. Wu insisted.
They were interrupted at this moment by loud cries from the outer room. “Mr. Wu, Mr. Wu!” the proprietor was shouting. The door burst open. Mr. Wu saw his own servant, Peng Er.
“Master, Master!” Peng Er cried, “you are wanted at home. The Second Lady has hanged herself from the old pomegranate tree!”
“My mother!” Mr. Wu muttered. He leaped to his feet and strode away, leaving Jasmine in the middle of the floor looking after him and frowning with anger.
The commotion of his own house rose over the walls of the compound and met him on the street. Priests had been called, and they were beating their gongs and crying for the lost soul of Ch’iuming. He ran through the open gate where no one stood to watch and hastened into the Peony Court. There the priests were, and there the whole household had gathered to wail and to weep and to call Ch’iuming’s name. He pushed through them, and in the midst of them upon the flags of the court she lay. Madame Wu knelt beside her and held her head on her arm. But Ch’iuming’s pale face hung over Madame Wu’s arm as though she was wholly lifeless.
“Is she dead?” Mr. Wu shouted.
“We can find no life in her,” Madame Wu replied. “I have sent for the foreign priest. If we have all these priests, why not him?”
At this very moment Brother André appeared, and the crowd divided before him like a sea before a wind. The other priests were silent in jealousy. In the center of this silence, Brother André fell to his knees and thrust a needle into Ch’iuming’s arm and held it there.
“I do not ask what you do,” Madame Wu said to him. “I know whatever it is, it is wise.”
“A stimulant,” Brother André said. “But it may be too late.” He put the needle away so quickly that no one saw it except Mr. and Mrs. Wu.
But it was not too late. Ch’iuming’s lips quivered. While they watched, her eyelids fluttered. Madame Wu sighed. “Ah, she is alive. Then the child is alive.”
“But why did she hang herself?” Mr. Wu exclaimed.
“Let us not ask until she can tell us,” Madame Wu replied. “But announce to the priests her soul has returned. Pay them well, Father of my sons. Let them think they were successful so that they will go away and we can have peace.”
Mr. Wu obeyed her and called out to the priests and led them away to the outer court. The women of the family remained, the elder cousins to commend the priests, and Meng and Rulan and Linyi to gaze quietly down into the face of Ch’iuming, whom they scarcely knew even while she was here in their own house. She was of their generation and yet linked to the older ones, and they could not be free with her, and so they had forgotten her.
But by this act she had brought herself nearer to them. She was unhappy, she did not want to belong to the elders. In each young woman’s heart an interest arose in Ch’iuming, and this interest was mingled with pity in Meng’s heart, with curiosity in Linyi’s, and with revolt in Rulan’s. Each determined in her own way to know Ch’iuming and why she had done this thing.
Yet there was no time for any of these feelings, for as Ch’iuming came to herself it became clear that her child was to be born too early. She must be carried in to her bed and the midwife sent for. These things were done, and Brother André was about to go away when Ch’iuming spoke.
“Did I see the foreign priest?” she whispered.
“He is about to go away,” Madame Wu said. She stood by the bed of fecundity while the women servants made Ch’iuming ready for the birth.
“Tell him to come here—only for a moment,” Ch’iuming begged.
Madame Wu was surprised. She did not know that Ch’iuming knew the tall foreigner. But since the girl was still so near death, she did not dare deny her. She went herself and stayed Brother André as he was about to leave. “She asks for you,” she said. “For a moment come in.”
So Brother André turned, and he stooped his head and went in through the low doorway into the room where Ch’iuming lay in the huge bed. Mr. Wu stayed behind. He was suddenly stiff with embarrassment. To what a pass had he brought the household! He did not doubt that Ch’iuming had hung herself because of Jasmine. In her silent way she had protested with her life.
When Brother André leaned over the bedside Ch’iuming spoke, but in so faint a voice he could not hear her. He leaned closer over her, and these were the words he then heard:
“If a girl is born, I give it to you when I die— It is only a foundling.”
“How can a foundling be born in this house?” he inquired gently.
“But I am only a foundling,” she said, “and this is the child of a foundling.”
With that she closed her eyes and gave herself up to pain. He went away with a grave face and told no one what she had said, and so low was her voice that no one else had heard her words.
Late that night a girl was born to Ch’iuming, a creature so small that Madame Wu took her and wrapped her in a cotton fleece and put her into her bosom to keep her alive. Then she went quickly into her own courts, leaving Ch’iuming to the midwife and to Ying, and in her own room she put the child into her bed and lay down beside her to keep her warmed. A woman servant came in to see what was needed.
“Heat bricks and bring them here,” Madame Kang said. “This child is a bud that must be carefully opened.”
“Oh, Mistress,” the woman said, “why not let her die? A girl—and what can she grow into but a sickly thing to make trouble in the house?”
“Obey me,” Madame Wu said.
The woman went muttering away and Madame Wu looked at the little creature. She was still breathing.
Two days later Brother André told Madame Wu of Ch’iuming’s strange request. The child had not died. She could not suckle, being too young, but she had swallowed a few drops of mother’s milk put into her mouth with a spoon. Ch’iuming’s milk had come, although she was too weak to speak. Even when Madame Wu told her that the child was alive, she had not answered.
“Certainly the child is not a foundling,” Madame Wu said to Brother André, with dignity. “She has been born into our house.”
“I knew you would say that,” he replied, “and you are right. But why does this young mother say she is a foundling?”
“She was, until she came here,” Madame Wu replied. She hesitated, and then to her own wonder she found herself telling Brother André what she had never told him, how it was she who had brought Ch’iuming into this house.
Brother André listened, his eyes downcast, his great hands clasped on his knees. She never saw those hands wi
thout wondering why they were so calloused. Now she asked suddenly, “Why are your hands so calloused?”
He was accustomed to her changes. “Because I till the land for the children’s food,” he said. He did not move his hands from under her gaze.
She went on with her story, her eyes on his hands.
“I suppose since you are a priest, you cannot understand either man or woman,” she said when her whole story was told.
“Being priest, I can understand both man and woman,” he said.
“Then tell me what I have done that is wrong.” She lifted her eyes from his hands to his face and wondered that out of all the world she had chosen to open her entire heart to a foreigner who had been born in some country across the sea whose waters and winds she would never know.
He answered her: “You have not considered that man is not entirely flesh, and that even such a man as your husband must be in communion with God. You have treated him with contempt.”
“I?” she exclaimed. “But I have thought of nothing but his welfare.”
“You have considered only the filling of his stomach and the softness of his bed,” Brother André said plainly. “And even worse than this, you have bought a young woman as you would buy a pound of pork. But a woman, any woman, is more than that, and of all women you should know it; You have been guilty of three sins.”
“Guilty?” she repeated.
“You have despised your husband, you have held in contempt a sister woman, and you have considered yourself unique and above all women. These sins have disturbed your house. Without knowing why, your sons have been restless and their wives unhappy, and in spite of your plans no one is happy. What has been your purpose, Madame?”
Confronted by his clear calm eyes, she trembled. “Only to be free,” she faltered. “I thought, if I did my duty to everyone, I could be free.”
“What do you mean by freedom?” he inquired.
“Very little,” she said humbly. “Simply to be mistress of my own person and my own time.”