Pearl Buck - Pavilion of Women

She was very grave at this. “You must not think of me in the night,” she said. “It is not fair to Ch’iuming. After all, her life is now entirely in you.”

He continued to look unhappy.

“Is she not pleasant to you?” she asked in her pretty voice.

“Oh, she is pleasant,” he said grudgingly. “But you — you are so far away from me these days. Are we to spend the rest of our lives as separately as this? You who have always lived in the core of my life—” His full underlip trembled.

Madame Wu was so moved that she rose involuntarily and went over to him. He seized her in his arms and pressed his face against her body. Something trembled inside her, and she grew alarmed, not of him but of herself. Was this moment’s weakness to defeat all that she had done?

“You,” he murmured, “pearls and jade — sandalwood and incense—”

She drew herself very gently from his clasp until only her hands were in his. “You will be happier than you have ever been,” she promised him.

“Will you come back to me?” he demanded.

“In new ways,” she promised. The moment was over, now that she could see his face. The lips with their lines of slight petulance were loosened. At the sight of them she felt her body turn to a shaft of cool marble. She withdrew even her hands.

“As for Fengmo,” she said, “do not trouble yourself. As to the tutor, it seems Linyi wants him to speak English. She says he is too old-fashioned otherwise. He will be ready to marry Linyi in a month. See if he is not!”

“You plotter,” Mr. Wu said, laughing. “You planner and plotter of men’s lives!” He was restored to good humor again and he rose and, laughing and shaking his head, he went away.

A few minutes later when Ying came in she found Madame Wu in one of her silences. When she saw Ying she lifted her head.

“Ying,” she said, “take some of my own scented soap and tell Ch’iuming to use no other.”

Ying stood still, shocked.

“Do not look at me like that,” Madame Wu said. “There is still more you must do. Take her one of my sandalwood combs for her hair, and put my sandalwood dust among her undergarments.”

“Whatever you say, Lady,” Ying replied sourly.

It was at this moment that Madame Wu saw Mr. Wu’s pipe. He had put it on a side table as he went out. She perceived instantly that he had left it on purpose as a sign that he would return. It was an old signal between man and woman, this leaving of a man’s pipe.

She pointed toward it as Ying turned and her pretty voice was sharp.

“Ying!” she called. “He forgot his pipe. Take it back to him.”

Ying turned without a word and picked up the pipe and took it away.

When Madame Wu had finished matching the silks, it was too dark to see the colors. She was about to have the candles lit when Fengmo came in from the twilight. He had taken off his school uniform and put on a long gown of cream silk brocaded in a pattern of the same color. His short hair he had brushed back from his square forehead. Madame Wu when she had greeted him praised him for his looks.

“A robe looks better than those trousers,” she said. She studied his brow as she spoke. It was a handsome brow, but one could not tell from it what was the quality of the brain it hid. Fengmo was only beginning to come into his manhood.

“Can you remember the words you learned last night?” she asked him, smiling. He had lit a foreign cigarette, of which he and Tsemo smoked many. The curl of rising smoke seemed somehow to suit him. He did not sit down but walked restlessly about the library, and he stopped and repeated the foreign words clearly.

“Can you understand them yet?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No, but tonight I shall ask him what they mean,” he replied.

He paused to listen. “He comes now,” he exclaimed.

They heard the long powerful footsteps of leather shoes upon stones. Then they saw Brother André at the door, escorted by the gateman, who fell back when he saw Madame Wu rise.

“Have you eaten?” Madame Wu asked in common greeting.

“I eat in the middle of the day only,” Brother André said. He was smiling in a pleasant, almost shy fashion. Again as he stood there Madame Wu felt the whole room, Fengmo, even herself, shrink small in the presence of this huge man. But he seemed unconscious of his own size or of himself.

“Fengmo was repeating the foreign words you taught him last night, but we do not know what they mean,” Madame Wu said as they sat down.

“I gave you words once spoken by a man of England,” Brother André said. “That is, he was born in England, and he lived and died there. But his soul wandered everywhere.”

He paused as though he were thinking, then he translated the words in a sort of chant.

“And not by eastern windows only When daylight comes, comes in the light.

In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!

But westward, look, the land is bright!”

To this Madame Wu and Fengmo listened, drinking in each word as though it were pure water.

“This is not religion?” Madame Wu asked doubtfully.

“It is poetry,” Fengmo said.

“I teach you the first English words that were taught me,” Brother André said, smiling at him. “And I did not understand them either at first, when I was a little boy in Italy.”

“So this same sun lights the whole world,” Madame Wu said musingly. She laughed. “You will smile at me, Brother André, but though I know better, my feeling has always been that the sun has belonged only to us.”

“The sun belongs to us all,” Brother André said, “and we reflect its light, one to another, east and West, rising and setting.”

The four walls of the room seemed to fade; the walls of the courts where she had spent her whole life receded. She had a moment’s clear vision. The world was full of lands and peoples under the same Heaven, and in the seven seas the same tides rose and fell.

She longed to stay and hear the next lesson which Brother André would give, but she knew that Fengmo, would not feel at ease if she stayed. She rose. “Teach my son,” she said, and went away.

“How does Linyi feel now that Fengmo is learning English?” Madame Wu asked Madame Kang. Her friend had come to see her late one evening, after the day’s turmoil was past. Here was a symbol of the friendship between the two women, that a few times a year Madame Wu went to Madame Kang, but twice and thrice in seven days Madame Kang came to Madame Wu. To both this appeared only natural.

“I am surprised at my child,” Madame Kang replied. “She says she will marry Fengmo if she likes him after she has talked with him several times, and after he has learned enough English to speak it. How shameless she is to want to see him! Yet I remember when I was a young girl, I yielded to a mischievous maidservant who enticed me one New Year’s Day when Mr. Kang came with his father to call at our house. I peeped through a latticed window and saw him. I was married and our first son born before I dared to tell him. And all that time the shame of it weighed on me like a sin.”

Madame Wu laughed her little ripple of mirth. “Doubtless the damage was done, too, by that one look.”

“I loved him all in one moment,” Madame Kang said without any shame now.

“Ah, those moments,” Madame Wu went on. “You see why it is wise to be ready for them. The hearts of the young are like fires ready to burn. Kindling and fuel are ready. Yet how can we arrange a meeting between our two, or several meetings?”

The two friends were sitting in the cool of the evening. On a table near them Ying had put a split watermelon. The yellow heart, dotted with glistening black seeds, was dewy and sweet. Madame Wu motioned to the portion at her friend’s side.