Pearl Buck - Pavilion of Women

Fengmo was like a fire in the house. Everything was fanned to feed the flame. He rose before dawn and ate by candlelight and by earliest day was riding his horse across the fields on narrow paths to the village he had chosen for his first school. Young and old must learn, he decreed. He planned schools for children and schools for men and women and old people.

Be sure there was much complaint among the old who had never troubled about books and who saw no need now to read. “When we have only a few years left us, must we trouble ourselves to know what other men have written?” Thus they complained. “Have we not our own thoughts?” they cried. “Have we not learned a little wisdom, too, after all these years? Our own wisdom is enough for us.”

But Fengmo was too young to grant this, and at last the older farmers came to Madame Wu to beg her to command her son to forbear, and Madame Wu received them. She was scrupulous always to receive courteously those beneath her. Superiors she had none, and her equals she could deny; but lesser folk never. So she received them in state in the main hall of the house, and she sent for Mr. Wu to come and take his usual place to the right of the central table while she sat on the left, so that the house should be honorably presented to the landfolk. Mr. Wu came in with dignity. He wore robes of wine-colored satin under a black velvet sleeveless jacket, all new because he was grown too fat for his old ones. Madame Wu was amazed at his fatness, for some time had passed since she had seen him except sitting at the table, and now less and less often did he appear even at the family table. He would die earlier than need be, she thought, looking at his jowls, and then she thought again that it was better to die happy, even though earlier, than to die less happy, even though later. She held her peace, therefore, and gave no warning.

When the two elders were seated the farmers came in dressed in their blue cotton garments and with new straw sandals on their feet. They brought small packages of cakes wrapped in heavy brown paper and tied with straw string, and under the string they had put pieces of red paper for good luck. These they presented and Mr. Wu received them, protesting properly that they need not show so much courtesy.

Then, standing humble before the gentry, the farmers made known their difficulty. Madame Wu listened and so did Mr. Wu, though with less interest. Mr. Wu agreed heartily with the farmers. “These brothers are entirely right,” he announced. “My son is behaving like a fool, and I shall command him to return at once to my house and leave you in peace.”

But Madame Wu knew all sides of the matter, and she had no intention of allowing Mr. Wu to act in ignorance. So she first agreed with him and then disagreed with him mildly. Thus she spoke:

“My sons’ father speaks very wisely and must be obeyed. You, good brothers, are all over forty years of age. Certainly you should not be compelled to do what is against your wish. But it may be there are some among you in the village who are young and who would benefit from a little learning — enough, say, so that you could cast up your accounts and see that you are not cheated in the markets.”

She turned to Mr. Wu and said in her voice, which grew only more soft with age, “How would it be if we forbade our son to teach any who are over forty years of age unless that one wishes it himself?”

This was a fair compromise, and so it was decided. From then on the older farmers had their freedom from Fengmo if they wished, and none needed to fear that he would be held in less favor for rents and seeds if he wished to remain unlettered.

But Fengmo laughed when Madame Wu told him of the visit of the old farmers. “I have a way to win!” he cried, and he welcomed the difficulties. The upshot of his work was that even some of the old farmers began to want learning when they saw how the younger ones profited by it, and be sure that Fengmo lost no chance to make it known when a young farmer gained by knowing his letters, so that he could read a bill and check an account. It became the fashion at last to know letters, and other villages asked for schools, and Fengmo was so busy that months went by without Madame Wu’s knowing how he did.

All this was very well for Fengmo, but it brought some disturbance into the house. Ch’iuming and Rulan moved into the village to live. This made Madame Wu uneasy, for Fengmo pressed them both into the service of his schools and how could Ch’iuming hide her love from Fengmo? Madame Wu grew exceedingly anxious, for, although Ch’iuming and Fengmo were of the same age, they were not of the same generation, and a very evil scandal would gather about the Wu name if there were any cloud about these two. But even while Madame Wu was anxious Fengmo came in one night to see her.

She received him willingly, for she knew by now that Fengmo had no time for anything except what he held important. She had a moment’s fear when she saw him, lest he came to tell her what she did not want to hear about Ch’iuming. It was indeed about her, but this is what he said. He sat down squarely on his chair, put his hands on his knees and began at once. His voice was steady while his eyes were rueful. She could not but admire his looks as he spoke. The fresh village air had made him red and healthy, and the success of his work had made him bold.

“Mother,” he began, “I do not know how to tell you what I must, but not knowing, I will begin anywhere.”

“Begin, my son,” she said.

He rubbed his hands over his short hair. When he had come home it was long and smoothly combed, but now he had cut it as short as any farmer’s, and it was a brush of black.

“Is it about Ch’iuming?” Madame Wu inquired.

“How do you know everything?” he asked, surprised.

“I have my ways,” she said. “Now, my son, what have you to say?”

The breach was made and he could speak. “You know, Mother, that no woman can ever move me.”

She smiled at his youth, and something in his serious young face touched her at the very center of her heart. Ah, perhaps the old ways of love and marriage were wrong — who knew? She leaned forward a little.

“I can remember—” So she began and then checked herself. She could remember a day when she was no older than Fengmo, and she had wakened early in the morning and had looked at the sleeping face of her husband, and had known that never could she love him. And yet she had done her duty and was content and her life had had its own ways of happiness.

But the very youth in Fengmo’s face stopped her. She leaned away again. No, she could not speak of herself to her son.

“What shall we do?” he asked.

“Let us consider what is most sensible,” she replied.

But he had already a plan. “I ask your permission to take Linyi with me, and we will live in the country, too.”

This he said, and while Madame Wu could not but see the wisdom of it, she was sad to think of another empty court under the roof. Then she was pleased that he thought of Linyi as a safety for himself, and the more she considered it the more she became willing to do what he asked.

“I will agree to this,” she said at last, “with one condition, and it is that when she gives birth to your children, you return here for the time of the birth and the few months after. The grandchildren should be born under our own roofs.”

To this Fengmo agreed, and within a few days after that Fengmo and Linyi closed the doors of their court and moved into an earthen-walled house in the village. And Madame Wu was content to have it so. She pondered for a while whether she should not send for Ch’iuming and give her advice and some solace of praise, but she decided that she would not. The young woman must learn by life, as all must learn, what she could have and what must be denied to her.