Pearl Buck - Pavilion of Women

The girl sank back and picked up the needle which had fallen and was hanging by the thread. She did not speak one word. Bending her head, she began to sew again with quick nimble movements of finger and hand. Madame Wu, looking down on that bent young head, saw a flush as red as peach flowers rise from between Ch’iuming’s shoulders and spread up the back of her round neck and into the roots of her soft black hair.

Madame Wu had by the end of the next day made up her mind as to the manner of Ch’iuming’s entrance into the court of Mr. Wu. The least disturbance would be caused if it were done quietly and at night. There was no reason for celebration. This was an affair of her own generation and Mr. Wu’s, and to allow the younger generation any part in it would be to embarrass them.

The next day, therefore, she directed Ying to help the girl in certain small details of her toilet, of which Ch’iuming would naturally be ignorant. She herself spent the day in the library. She had no desire to take up again the forbidden books. Now indeed she felt she might never open one again. What more had she to do with man? Instead she chose a book of history and began to read from the beginning of time, when earth and Heaven were not separate, but mingled together in chaos.

The day passed as though she were out of her body and traveling in space. No one came near her. She knew that all the household waited to see what would be her will, and until she had settled Ch’iuming, no one would come here. No one knew how to talk so long as affairs in the center of the family remained confused. Her only visitor was the land steward, who sent word in the late afternoon that he would like to report the matter of the land purchase. She gave orders that he was to come, and when he appeared upon the threshold of the library she looked up from her book and without closing it bade him come in. He came in and stood before her and drew a folded paper from his breast.

“Lady,” he said, “I have brought the deed of purchase for the Wang lot. We paid eighty for it. Had our lord stayed out of it, I might have had it for seventy, but he remembered that the land had been a gift and he would not be hard.”

“I will take the deed,” she said, without answering his complaint against Mr. Wu. She put out her hand and he placed in it the deed.

“Is that all?” she asked. Beyond doubt this man knew what was happening in the house. She saw him cast a quick look around as though his eye searched for a new face.

“Is that all?” she repeated.

He brought back his eyes but, being a coarse common man, he could not hide what he thought. She saw the loosening of the corners of his thick lips, the wavering of his eyes, and read his thoughts as clearly as though she were reading the forbidden book.

“Well?” she asked sharply.

He dropped his glance at that sharpness. “There is nothing more, Lady,” he said. “Except, unless you forbid it, I will plant the new land to beans. It is late for any other crops.”

“Beans and then winter wheat,” she directed.

“That is what I thought,” he agreed.

She nodded and then knew that he expected some small gift on the purchase. She rose and took a key from her inner pocket and fitted it to a wooden chest that stood against the wall and, opening the door of this, she took out an ironbound wooden box, opened this and took out some silver dollars, counting ten before his eyes.

“With this I thank you,” she said courteously.

He held out his hand in protest, drew back, rolled his head to deny the gift, and then took it. “Thank you, Lady, thank you,” he said over and over again and then backed from her presence and so out of the door. In the court she saw him straighten himself and look right and left as he walked to the gate.

But she was pleased that Ch’iuming was not to be seen. The girl had the grace, to stay hidden. That was more favor added to her. Madame Wu closed the book she had laid upon the table open and put it away into the covers and went into the sitting room. Ying had brought her night meal and with it Ch’iuming’s. Madame Wu examined the food that the girl was to eat. Then she bent and smelled it.

“You have not put in garlic or onion or any strong-smelling thing?” she inquired of Ying.

“I know what should be done,” Ying said shortly.

“No pepper?” Madame Wu persisted. “It makes heartburn.”

“Nothing a baby could not eat,” Ying replied. She had made her kind face unfriendly and indifferent to show her mistress she had not relented. Madame Wu smiled at the angry eyes and pursed mouth of her maid.

“Ying, you are faithfulness itself,” she said. “But if you would really serve me, then know that I do only what I wish.”

But Ying would not answer that. “Lady, your meal is in your room,” she said, still shortly.

So Madame Wu ate her own meal alone in her own room with her usual dainty slowness, and she loitered over it and smoked her little pipe. Then she walked into the court where all day a gardener had been busy transplanting the orchids. She had given him directions as to their placing, and now the work was done. He had pinched off flower and bud and had cut off the outer leaves, but to each stalk a single spire of new leaf remained. They would live. The court where they had bloomed today was planted with blooming peonies.

When darkness had fallen she waited an hour, and after the hour of darkness she went into the house again. Ch’iuming had bathed herself and combed her hair. She had put on the new garments. Now she sat upright on the edge of the narrow bed, her hands clasped on her lap. Her young face was fixed and told nothing. But from under her hair, smoothed over her ears, Madame Wu saw two fine streams of sweat pouring down. She sat down beside the girl.

“You must not be afraid,” she said. “He is a very kind man.”

The girl threw her a quick look from under her lowered eyelids, and looked down again.

“You have only to obey him,” Madame Wu said. But she felt somehow cruel even as she said these words. Yet why should she feel cruel? The girl was no longer a child. The man who was to have been her husband had died. Had she lived on in the house of her foster mother, what could she have hoped as her lot except to be married, as a young widow never wed, to some other farmer whose wife had died and left him with many children? Surely this fate was better than that!

So Madame Wu tried to harden herself. But the girl put up her hand stealthily and wiped the sweat from her cheeks and remained silent.

“You had better take her now,” Madame Wu said abruptly to Ying, who stood waiting.

Ying stepped forward and took the girl’s sleeve between her thumb and finger. “Come,” she said.

Ch’iuming rose. Her full red mouth opened, and she began to pant softly and to hang back. Her eyes grew wide and very black.

“Come,” Ying said hardily. “For what else have you been brought into this house?”

The girl looked from Ying’s face to Madame Wu’s. Then, seeing nothing in either face to give her escape, she bent her head and followed Ying out of the room, out of the gate, and so out of the court.

Left alone, Madame Wu sat for some time without moving her body. Nor did a thought stir her mind. She sat in a state of blind feeling, and she let feeling take its course. Did she suffer pain? She knew she did not. Did she regret? No, she had no regrets. In this state of emptiness so might a soul find itself lost in death.

Then she lifted her head. Her mouth quivered. Did not a soul unborn exist also in the womb in just such emptiness? So she, too, might now be born again. She rose and went out into the court and lifted her face to the dark sky. The night was soft and black, and the square of sky above the courtyard was covered with clouds through which no stars shone. There would be rain before morning. But she always slept well on a rainy night.