Pearl Buck - Pavilion of Women

But André’s children she kept in the temple, and as each girl became sixteen; she betrothed her to a suitable young man, and such was the fame of these girls that there were always lists of young men who wanted wives from among them. Each time that a girl reached her sixteenth birthday Madame Wu called her to her side and spoke to her about the young men who were ready to marry her. Be sure there was talk enough in the city at such new ways, for Madame Wu did not only tell the name and the age and the qualities of the young men, but she showed pictures also.

“Shall only men see pictures?” she inquired when anyone spoke her wonder. “Shall it not be just for a woman to see also the face of the man?”

No one dared to judge Madame Wu, and so it became a matter for rivalry and honor that young men sent their pictures to her and she herself submitted them at the suitable time to the girls as they came of age. When the girl had chosen, she sent her picture to the young man, and such was the fame of the temple girls that never had one been rejected by the man she chose.

These girls Madame Wu came to consider as her own daughters, and to each she taught all that was peaceful for good relationship between man and woman. All were good wives, and Madame Wu became famous in that whole region for these girls.

It was her pride to give each of them a fine wedding, and she took the place of the mother. No one understood her smile or the look of distance in her eyes. But she did not need understanding. It seemed to her that André himself stood beside her as one by one she sent the foundlings who were his children into quiet and secure homes. For it was not enough for Madame Wu that she prepared the girls. She allowed none to wed any man unless she herself had talked with him, and if he had a mother until she had seen and talked with the mother also. A bad-tempered mother-in-law was reason for forbidding the marriage, and three times she did so, and twice out of the three times so distraught was the young man over his loss that he himself departed from his mother.

This distressed Madame Wu, for well she knew a son must not leave his father’s house, and yet André had once spoken of this to her.

He came to her mind more clearly than ever in these days as she grew older, and she remembered very well what he had said to her one winter’s day, after his lesson to Fengmo. Snow had fallen in the court, and there were only his great footsteps across its whiteness. Fengmo as well as Ying had walked through the verandas, but André strode through the snow.

She had remonstrated with him. “Your feet doubtless are wet.”

He had stared down at his shoes as though he did not know what she said, and without remark had unfolded his books, and then Fengmo had come in and he began to teach. She had sat near that day, listening and not speaking. But when Fengmo had gone, she had put this question, “How far should a son be allowed to leave his father’s house?”

For already she had foreseen that such teaching as his would lead to Fengmo’s wandering.

“His father’s house is his birthplace, no more,” he had replied. He was setting the books in order, piling one on the other upon the cotton kerchief in which he carried them.

“Is this to say that a man has no duty to his parents?” she had asked.

“I am the wrong one to ask that,” he had replied. He had looked at her quickly and then away again, and his smile came out like a light upon his face. “See how far I have wandered! Yet I do not forget that my beginning was in a house in Venice.”

“Venice?” she had repeated. He had never before given her the name of his birthplace.

“A city like Soochow,” he had said, “whose streets are waterways, and instead of sedans we used boats, and I looked out at dawn and sunset and saw the water change to running gold.”

He had paused, staring at the blank wall before him, but she knew he saw those streets of golden water. Then he had brought himself back again and bade her farewell for that day.

In such ways had he broken down the walls of the compound in which she had lived, and now she held her peace when a young man left an arrogant and angry mother. The young must live, too. All must live.

This crumbling of the walls prepared her for Liangmo, when he came in with his lips pursed to complain of his brother Fengmo. She did not see her sons every day or even every month, and so each time they came inside her door she saw them freshly. Thus today she saw Liangmo as a prosperous man of affairs, the coming head of a great family, a merchant and a maker of money.

After greetings, Liangmo came straight to the heart of the matter. “My younger brother is becoming a fanatic,” he complained. “Actually he wishes Meng to go out and teach. This is impossible. Linyi looks like a woman teacher. Her hair is cut off, and it has turned brown with the sun. Rulan looks like a communist woman. It is all hateful to me. Is this suitable for our family?”

Madame Wu smiled. “Did you not find the villages very clean?” she asked.

But Liangmo would not see any good. “I think first of our family, not of strangers and common folk,” he said stubbornly. “The responsibility of the family rests upon me, Our Mother, after you and my father are gone.”

Seldom did his sons speak of Mr. Wu. All knew that whatever had been his place it was all but empty now. He was drowsy and content and asked nothing but to be let alone. It is true that he was the beloved of his grandchildren. They went clamoring into his court, and he fed them sweetmeats and laughed at them and napped while they played, and Jasmine, feeling her childlessness, enticed them often and treated them as her own, so that the old man who protected her would feel no lack about him. The old must have children about them, she knew, to keep them from the fear of death.

But Liangmo was very proper as the eldest son, and he gave his father respect at all times, by mouth at least, and hid his weakness. He now went on to complain further against Fengmo.

“And our youngest brother, Yenmo, is it fitting that he should not go away to school?”

“Yenmo does not wish to go,” Madame Wu said mildly.

“Is that a reason why he should not be compelled to go?” Liangmo asked. “Does he look as the younger son in our house should look? There is no difference between him and a farmer’s son.”

“Well, well—” she said in her mildest voice.

Liangmo understood that she meant for him to be silent and so he quenched his anger in a long drink of tea and sat with his face very solemn.

Madame Wu did not speak for a long time. She knew the value of silence. It was a soft gray day, the skies gray, the walls gray, and from the pool in the court a delicate mist rose from the cold water into air unduly warm for the season. The smell of earth hung about the courts.

“You are well pleased in your own courts, my son?” Madame Wu said at last.

“Certainly I am,” Liangmo said. He put down his tea bowl. “I am obeyed there. My children are healthy and intelligent. Do you know, Our Mother, that the eldest has finished the lower school already?”

“Can it be so?” Madame Wu replied amiably. “And in the city, is all well?”

“Well enough,” Liangmo said. “Markets are somewhat poor, perhaps, but not too poor for the season. Some foreign goods come in, now that the war is ended. The foreign hospital is raising a new building, and I hear new foreigners are coming.”

“Is this a good thing?” Madame Wu inquired.

“Fengmo is pleased,” Liangmo said dryly. “For myself, I can only say we are fortunate. Meng needs no foreign doctors and the children are never ill.”

“I remember I cured a grandson in the Kang house with our grandmother’s herb brew,” Madame Wu murmured. “I suppose he is a great lad now—”