“You make me feel that marriage is nothing,” Rulan said in a low voice. “I might as well have been married to anyone as to Tsemo.”
Energy returned to Madame Wu. “I have not finished,” she said. “In one sense, you are right. Any healthy young woman can marry any healthy young man and both can fulfill their duty to life. For this reason it is well that our old traditions be maintained. Older persons can certainly choose better for the race than the young ones can for themselves. Consider Liangmo and Meng—they are happy. But certainly they have not absolute happiness, as you and Tsemo demand. They accept the bearing of children as their whole life. Liangmo has no other ambition than to be a good husband and father. Neither of them asks more. For this it is best that the elders choose the two who are to marry, if the two are like Liangmo, and Meng.”
“But we are not like them,” Rulan said with some heat.
“You are not,” Madame Wu agreed. “You wish friendship and companionship between your two individual selves. Ah, you ask very much of marriage, my child. Marriage was not designed for this extra burden.”
“What would we have done? Lived without marriage?” Rulan inquired without meaning rudeness.
“Perhaps—perhaps.” Madame Wu was surprised to hear herself say. “But that, too, is difficult, since you are man and woman and the body demands its own life.”
She paused, searching for words which were never in her before, and she found them. “You and Tsemo are very lucky. You love each other in all ways. Then love each other, my child! Life is too short for such love. Love one another and do not waste one hour in anger. Divide your love from your passion and let there be no confusion between the two. Some day, when the division is clear and established by habit, when your children are born and growing and your bodies are old, and passion gone, as, mercifully, it does go, you will know the best love of all.”
She was suddenly intensely lonely for André, and the knowledge that never again would she look upon his living face pierced her with an agony she had not yet felt. She closed her eyes and endured the pain. Then after a while she felt Rulan take her hand and press it to her cheeks. She felt one warm cheek and then the other. But still she did not open her eyes.
“And in secret the woman has to lead,” she said. “In secret the woman always has to lead, and she must, because life rests upon her, and upon her alone. I warn you, my son will be of no help to you in making your marriage happy.”
When she opened her eyes again the room was empty. Rulan had gone.
That night when Ying undressed her for bed Madame Wu spoke, after silence so long and deep that Ying had not dared to break it with her usual chatter. “Ying!”
“Yes, Mistress?” Ying looked into the mirror over Madame Wu’s head. She was brushing the long black silken hair that was only now beginning to show a few feathers of white at the temples. “I have a task for you.”
“Yes, Mistress?”
“In less than a month my second son will come home.”
“I know that, Mistress. We all know it.”
“This is the task. Every night when you have finished with me, you are to go to my second son’s wife and do for her what you used to do for me.”
Ying smiled into the mirror, but Madame Wu did not smile back. She went on, not meeting Ying’s eyes. “You are to forget nothing that I used to do—the fragrant bath, the scenting of the seven orifices, the smoothing with oil, the perfume in the hair.”
“I know, Lady.” Ying’s voice was warm and intimate. Then she stayed the brush. “What if she forbids me?” she asked. “That one cares nothing for her beauty.”
“She will not forbid you,” Madame Wu said. “She needs help, poor child, as all women need it. And she knows it now.”
“Yes, Mistress,” Ying said.
XIII
TSEMO CAME HOME ON the fifth day of the ninth moon month. The news of his coming was brought by electric letter to the city and by foot-messenger to the house of Wu, and Mr. Wu himself took the letter to Madame Wu. He did not often enter her courts now for any cause, and when she saw him she knew that it had to do with one of the sons. He held out the sheet of paper. “Our second son comes home,” he said with his wide smile. She took the letter and read it and turned it over and over in her hands. It was the first time she had ever seen an electric letter. She knew, because once André had explained it, that the paper itself was not blown over the wires as she had imagined it. Not even words were spoken. Symbols were beaten upon a machine, and by these the messages were carried.
“The drums of savages, beaten in the jungle,” she had remarked.
“Much that man does is only the refinement of savagery,” he had replied.
She recalled these words as she mused over the electric letter. “We must prepare a welcoming feast,” she said aloud.
“I shall invite all my friends,” Mr. Wu declared.
She proceeded to plan. “We ought also to give a secondary feast for the shop clerks and the farm workers.”
“Everything—everything,” he declared in his large lordly manner.
She looked at him from under her half-veiled eyes. He had returned to his old self. Jasmine had done him good. He was reassured of his own worth. His failure with herself, for in his own way he had been mortified that she had rejected him, and his failure with Ch’iuming had done him harm. He was the sort of man who had constantly to feel himself successful with his women. How well she knew, who had for so many years made his success her duty! But Ch’iuming was young and ignorant, and she had not understood these things, and Jasmine was, in the midst of all her falsity, sincere enough in this business by which she earned her rice and roof. Madame Wu felt her secret heart grow light, and also cool and scornful. She felt somewhat ashamed of such malice, although once she would have accepted it as her share of human nature.
“I am not a woman without sin,” she had once told André. “That is, if I am to accept your measure of sin—the secret thought, the hidden wish. Outer rectitude I can attain, but who can control the heart?”
“A few can also do it,” he had replied. “You are one of those few.”
She knew that if she were to continue near him she must attain the heights where he lived. He would not come down to her.
So now she spoke patiently with Mr. Wu, who was the father of her sons. “Let everything be as you wish.”
He leaned forward, his hands on his fat knees, smiling. He lowered his voice to speak to her in confidence. “It may be you do not know that Tsemo is my favorite son. For that reason I have always been disturbed that his wife is an angry woman. Tsemo should have married someone soft and reasonable.”
Madame Wu could not conceal all her barbs. “You mistake Tsemo somewhat,” she said. In her own ears she heard her voice too silvery sharp. “He is intelligent. Rulan is also intelligent. I find I think better of her as time goes on.”
Mr. Wu looked alarmed, as he always did at the mention of intelligence, and hastily he withdrew. “Well, well,” he said, in his usual voice, “I dare say you are right. Then will you arrange matters or shall I?”
“I will order what is to be within the house, and you shall invite the guests and decide the wines,” she said.
They bowed and parted, and she knew as he went away that what had been between them was only of the flesh. He was repulsive to her. Yet had they not fulfilled the very duty of which she had spoken to Rulan? They had carried on the family through their generation, they had fulfilled the instincts of their race, and they had freed themselves from each other when this was done. Now she knew that, even as André had discovered for her the residue of her individual self, Jasmine had done the same for Mr. Wu. No ties had been broken, the house continued as before, and their position in it was the same. She felt the wisdom of bringing Jasmine under the roof, this roof wide enough for all of the least of the house of Wu. The supreme sin of giving birth to a nameless and illegitimate child would not be theirs. Jasmine’s children would have their pl
ace in the human order.
She felt peace upon her as she proceeded to the day’s duty. She had no time today for herself. She sent for cook and steward and head-waiter, she sent for the cleaning maids and the seamstresses. The children’s clothes must be inspected, and those who needed new garments must have them made. Yenmo, her youngest son, must come in from the country.
“It is time,” she told the land steward, “that my fourth son return to the home. Affairs are now clear in the family.”
The steward laughed. “Madame, this son will be the one to manage the land after you. Our eldest young lord does well in the shops, but the little fourth lord is made for the land.”
Madame Wu had not seen her fourth son in many months, and now she felt some wonder in her about him. During the years of change from child to man all males were the same, she had always said. They needed only to be fed, to be taught the same things, to live much in the open air, to be kept away from gambling places and brothels and family dissensions. For this reason she had sent Yenmo into the country to live with country cousins and farmers. Now he must come back and let her take his measure.
“Prepare the two small rooms in my eldest son’s east court,” she commanded Ying, “They are full of boxes and waste now, and used by no one. Let them be furnished for Yenmo. They shall be his until he marries.”
Properly Yenmo should have been placed near his father, but that she would not allow. Neither did she want him too near herself, this hearty lusty growing youth. But Liangmo and Meng would be kind to him, and the children would enjoy him.
Thus everything was prepared. Last of all did Madame Wu herself inspect Rulan. It was the very day of the return. Tsemo would come sometime after midday, but none could tell when, for he must come by boat. It was a pity that the motorcar could not be sent for him, but the road was too narrow and the farmers cried to Heaven if its great wheels ran on their soil. It remained therefore in the special room by the gate where it was kept, a thing for wonder and amazement to all who saw it, but of little real use. Yet Mr. Wu would have felt himself very backward and old-fashioned had he not bought it, and it was comfort even to Tsemo to say carelessly in company, “My father’s foreign car—”
So Rulan stood before Madame Wu, very docile and even shy. She had put on a new robe of a clear dark red, and this firm color suited her pale skin and red mouth. Madame Wu approved its close cut, its length, and did not mention the shortness of the sleeves, since Rulan had beautiful arms and hands. She bade Ying open her jewel box and from it she selected a thick gold ring set with rubies. This ring she put on the middle finger of Rulan’s right hand, and Rulan lifted her hand to admire it. “I dislike rings usually, Mother,” she said, “but this one I like.”
“It suits you,” Madame Wu replied, “and what suits a woman makes her beautiful.”
Rulan had washed her hair freshly, but she had not oiled it and it lay on her shoulders as soft as unwound silk. Ying had cut its edge even and smooth. It was a very new fashion for young women to let their hair go unbound, and Madame Wu did not like it. She would have complained had Meng copied it. But today she saw that the softness set off Rulan’s face, and again she did not speak against it. Whatever made a woman more beautiful was to be accepted.
“Open your mouth,” she commanded Rulan. The girl opened her mouth and Madame Wu peered into it. It was red and clean as a child’s, and the teeth were white and sound. From this mouth came a sweet fresh breath.
She lifted the girl’s skirts and examined the inner garments. All were clean as snow, all scented, and prettily embroidered.
She lifted the girl’s hands and smelled the palms. They were scented, and her hair was scented, and from her body came the delicate scent which once she herself had used.
“You will do well enough, my child,” Madame Wu said kindly. “I find no fault with your body. I cannot examine your heart and your mind—these you must examine for me. The body comes first, but the residue is what lasts.”
“I have forgotten nothing you told me,” Rulan said solemnly.
Now Tsemo was expected any time within four or five hours, but who could know that while all this was going on in the house of the Wu family he was approaching by sky and not by water? Thus, instead of coming to the land by the river, he came down out of the sky and touched earth just outside the low wall on the south side of the town. When his superior officer in the capital had heard of his return home, the weight of the Wu family in that province was such that he had sent him with a government plane and pilot.
The pilot was concerned when he dropped his passenger upon a field, with no one near to meet him. But Tsemo laughed at him.
“This is my home town,” he said. “I can find my own way.”
So the pilot took off again into the sky, and Tsemo walked calmly homeward, everybody staring and greeting him as he went and asking him how he came, and goggling and silenced by wonder when he said, “I came by empty air.”
Children and idlers ran ahead to tell them at the house of Wu that the Second Lord was coming, but Tsemo walked in such long strong steps that he was very close behind. Thus Madame Wu and Rulan had barely heard the gateman’s wife, who had run in to gasp out her news, when Tsemo himself was at her heels. By right he should have gone first to his father, but be sure Liangmo had written him who was in his father’s courts, and he had no mind to see a strange woman before he saw his mother. Therefore he went first to Madame Wu and was confounded to see with her Rulan, his own wife.
It was an awkward moment, for by old tradition he should not greet his wife before his mother. To his surprise Rulan helped him. She fell back gracefully and gave him time and space.
“My son, you have come at last.” This was Madame Wu’s greeting.
She put out her hands and felt of his arms and his shoulders as mothers do. “You are thinner than you were but sounder,” she said. “Harder and healthier,” she added, looking at his ruddy face.
“I am well,” he said, “but very busy—indeed, busy half to death. And you, Mother, look well—better than when I went away.”
This and more passed between them, and still Rulan stood waiting, and Tsemo wondered very much at this patience. It was not like her to be patient. To his further surprise, his mother now stepped back and put out her hand and took Rulan’s and drew her forward.
“She has been very good,” Madame Wu said. “She has been obedient, and she has tried hard and done well.”
Nothing could have pleased Tsemo so much as this commendation of his wife by his mother. Like all sons of strong mothers, he needed her praise of what he had done. She had never praised Rulan before, and it had been one of the causes of his anger against Rulan that his mother had not praised her. This Madame Wu now understood. She saw the pleasure in his handsome face, in his free smile, in his brightening eyes. He spoke a few words to Rulan, cool as such words should be in the presence of the older generation.
“Ah—you are well?”
“Thank you, I am well—and you?”
These were the few words they spoke with their lips, but their eyes said more. For Rulan lifted her eyes to his, and he saw her more nearly beautiful than he had ever seen her, the red cloth of her gown close fitting about her neck and lending depth to her golden pallor.
He withdrew his eyes and turned to his mother, stammering and blushing. “Mother, thank you very much for taking time to teach her—for taking time to—to—to—”
Madame Wu understood and answered him. “My son, at last I will say, ‘You have chosen well.’ ”
She saw tears come into Rulan’s eyes, and a tenderness she had never known before filled her being. How helpless were the young and in spite of all their bravery, how needy of the old to approve them!
“Be tender to the young, they did not ask to be born,” André had once said to her. She remembered it well, for on that day she had been angry with Fengmo because he came late.
“Nor did I ask to be born,” she had retorted.
> He had looked at her with that large deep gaze of his. “Ah, because you have suffered is the one reason why you should never make others suffer,” he had said. “Only the small and the mean retaliate for pain. You, Madame, are too high for it.”
She had accepted this in silence, swallowing anger. He had gone on, escaping from her into the universe. “And of what meaning is suffering,” he had mused, “if it does not teach us, who are the strong, to prevent it for others? We are shown what it is, we taste the bitterness, in order to stir us to the will to cast it out of the world. Else this earth itself is hell.”
Now, remembering his words, she felt an immeasurable longing to make these two happy in her house. She took Rulan’s hand and Tsemo’s hand and clasped them together.
“Your duty to me is done, my son,” she said. “Take her to your own courts and spend your next half-hour with her alone. It will be time enough then to go and greet your father.”
She watched them go away, hand still in hand, and sat down, smiled, and smoked her silver pipe awhile.
For the next ten days the house was a turmoil of feasting. Every relative near and far wished to see Tsemo and talk with him and ask his opinion concerning the new war and the removal of the seat of government inland and what he thought the price of rice would be as a consequence of the disturbances, and whether the foreign white people would fight with the East Ocean dwarfs or against them. No one thought of defeat by the enemy. The only question was whether there should be the open resistance of arms or the secret resistance of time. Tsemo, being young, was for open resistance. Mr. Wu, knowing nothing of such things, followed his mind.