Madame Wu saw them without appearing to do so. She did not move in her chair. In her hands she held the box of pearls. She had often let Madame Kang talk of her difficulties with Mr. Kang. Neither of them had ever talked of Mr. Wu, beyond a word or two put in by Madame Kang.
“Ah, Ailien,” she would say, “your sons’ father is so little trouble to you. So far I have never heard of his even entering a house of flowers. But my man—well, he is good, too. Yes, only—”
At this point Madame Kang always paused and sighed.
“Meichen,” Madame Wu had once said many years ago, “why not allow him to enjoy himself so long as he always comes home before morning?” She had never forgotten the look of shame that came into her friend’s honest eyes. “I am jealous,” Madame Kang had declared. “I am so jealous that my blood turns to fire.”
Madame Wu, who had never known what jealousy was, became silent. This was something in her friend which she could not understand. She could understand it less when she remembered Mr. Kang, who was an ordinary wealthy merchant and not even handsome. He was shrewd but not intelligent. She could not imagine any pleasure in being married to him.
“I have been wanting for a long time to tell you something,” she said now after a moment. “At first, when I began thinking about it I thought I would ask your advice. But—I have not. Now I think it is beyond advice. It has already become certainty.”
Madame Kang sat waiting while she fanned herself. The slight breeze from the fan dried her tears. She wept and laughed easily out of the very excess of her goodness. In this friendship she knew humbly that she took the second place. It was not only that she was not beautiful, but in her own mind she did nothing so well as Madame Wu. Thus with all her efforts her house, though as large and as handsome as this one, was seldom clean and never ordered. In spite of her every endeavor, the servants took charge of it, and convenience rather than good manners had become the habit. When she came here she felt this, although living in her house she did not see it. But she often told herself that anyone who came into Madame Wu’s presence grew better for it, and this was perhaps the chief reason why she continued to come ten times to this house to Madame Wu’s one visit to her own house.
“Whatever you want to tell me,” she now said.
Madame Wu lifted her eyes. They were long and large, and the black irises were very distinct against the white, and this gave them their look of ageless youth. She spoke with cool clarity. “Ailien, I have decided that today I shall ask my sons’ father to take a concubine.”
Madame Kang’s round mouth dropped ajar. Her white small teeth, which were her one beauty, showed between her full lips. “Has—he—has he, too—” she gasped.
“He has not,” Madame Wu said. “No, it is nothing like that. Of course, I have never asked what he does at his men’s feasts. That has nothing to do with me or our home. No, it is only for his own sake—and mine.”
“But how—for you?” Madame Kang asked. She felt at this moment suddenly superior in her own relationship to Mr. Kang. Such a step would never have occurred to her, nor, she was sure, to him. A concubine always in the house, a member of the family, her children fighting with the other children, she contending with the first wife for the man—all this would be worse than flower houses.
“I wish for it,” Madame Wu said. She was gazing now into the depths of the clear little pool. The orchids she had plucked an hour ago lay on her knee, still fresh. So quiet was she that in her presence flowers lived many hours without fading.
“But will he consent?” Madame Kang asked gravely. “He has always loved you.”
“He will not consent at first,” Madame Wu said tranquilly.
Now that she had received this news, Madame Kang was full of questions. They poured out of her, and the fan dropped from her hand. “But will you choose the girl—or he? And, Ailien, if she has children, can you bear it? Oh, me, is there not always trouble in a house where two women are under one man’s roof?”
“I cannot complain of it if at my wish he takes her,” Madame Wu said.
“Ailien, you would not compel him?” Madame Kang asked with pleading.
“I have never compelled him to do anything,” Madame Wu replied.
Someone coughed, and both ladies looked up. Ying stood in the doorway. On her round cheerful face was a mischievous look which Madame Wu at once recognized.
“Do not tell me that on this day of all days Little Sister Hsia is here!” she exclaimed. Her lovely voice was tinged with rueful mirth.
“It is she,” Ying said. She stopped to laugh and then covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, heaven, she will hear me,” she whispered. “But Lady, I swear she does not understand a no. I told her you were having guests—”
“Not that it was my birthday!” Madame Wu exclaimed. “I do not want to have to invite her.”
“I am not so stupid as that,” Ying replied. “But I told her that Madame Kang was here.”
“I am going,” Madame Kang said with haste. “I have no time to listen to foreign gospel today. Indeed, Ailien, I came here when I should have been directing the affairs of the house, only to give you my gift.”
But Madame Wu put out her slender hand. “Meichen, you may not go. You must sit here with me, and together we will be kind to her and listen to her. If she does not leave at the end of a half an hour, then you may rise and say farewell.”
Madame Kang yielded, as she always did, being unable to refuse anything to one she loved. She sat down again in great good nature, and Ying went away and came back bringing with her a foreigner, a woman.
“Little Sister Hsia!” she announced.
“Oh, Madame Wu—oh, Madame Kang!” Little Sister Hsia cried. She was a tall, thin, pale woman, now nearly middle-aged, whose birthplace was England. The scanty hair on her head was the color of sand, and she had fish eyes. Her nose was thin and high, and her lips were blue. In her Western dress of striped gray cotton she looked older than she was, but even at her best she could never have been pretty. Long ago the two Chinese ladies had come to this conclusion. But they liked her for her goodness and pitied her for her lonely life in the city where there were so few of her kind. They did not, as some of their friends did, put her off with excuses when she came to see them. Indeed, in this both Madame Wu and Madame Kang were much too kind. But since Little Sister Hsia was a virgin, there could be no talk in her presence of concubines.
“Please sit down, Little Sister,” Madame Wu said in her pretty voice. “Have you eaten your breakfast?”
Little Sister Hsia laughed. She had never, in spite of many years of living in the city, learned to be wholly at ease with the ladies. She laughed incessantly while she talked. “Oh … I get up to box farmers,” she said. She studied Chinese faithfully every day, but since she had a dull ear she still spoke as a Westerner. Now she confused the sounds of two words. The two ladies looked at each other with a faint bewilderment, although they were accustomed to Little Sister’s confusions.
“Box farmers?” Madame Kang repeated.
“Resemble farmers,” Madame Wu murmured. “The two words are much alike, it is true.”
“Oh, did I say that?” Little Sister cried, laughing. “Oh, please, I am too stupid!”
But Madame Wu saw the red rush up from her neck and spot her pale skin, and she understood the tumult in this uneasy foreign heart.
“Ying, bring some tea and some little cakes,” she said. “Bring some of the long-life cakes,” she added, and relented. “Why should I not tell my foreign friend that it is my birthday?”
“Oh, your birthday!” Little Sister Hsia cried. “Oh, I didn’t know—”
“Why should you know?” Madame Wu asked. “I am forty years old today.”
Little Sister Hsia gazed at her with eyes that were wistful. “Forty?” she repeated. She fluttered her hands and laughed her meaningless shy laughter. “Why,” she stammered, “why, Madame Wu, you look twenty.”
“How old are you, Little Sist
er?” Madame Kang asked politely.
Madame Wu looked at her with gentle reproach. “Meichen, I have never told you, but it is not polite, according to the Western custom, to ask a woman’s age. My second son’s wife, who has lived in Shanghai and knows foreigners, told me so.”
“Not polite?” Madame Kang repeated. Her round black eyes looked blank. “Why not?”
“Oh, ha, ha!” Little Sister Hsia laughed. “It doesn’t matter—I have been here so long, I am so used—”
Madame Kang looked at her with mild interest. “Then how old are you?” she asked again.
Little Sister Hsia was suddenly solemn. “Oh—thirtyish,” she said in a low quick voice.
Madame Kang did not understand her. “Thirty-six,” she repeated amiably.
“No, no, not thirty-six, not so much,” Little Sister Hsia was laughing again, but there was protest in the laughter.
Madame Wu heard this protest. “Come,” she said, “what does age matter? It is a good thing to live life year by year, enjoying each year.” She understood, by her gift of divining others, that the matter of age touched this Western woman because she was still a virgin. An old virgin! She had once seen this before in her own mother’s family. Her mother’s mother’s youngest sister had remained an old virgin, because the man she had been about to marry had died. The family had admired her and at the same time had been irritated daily by an elderly unmarried woman withering under their roof. At last, for her own peace, she had become a nun. In a fashion this Western woman was also perhaps a nun.
In her great kindness Madame Wu now said, “I have guests coming in a short time, Little Sister, but before they come preach a little gospel to us.” She knew that nothing pleased the foreign woman so much as to preach.
Little Sister Hsia looked at her with gratitude and reached her hand into a deep black bag she carried with her always. Out of this she brought a thick book with a worn leather cover and a black spectacle case. She took out the spectacles and put them on her high nose and opened the book.
“I was guided today, dear Madame Wu,” she said in an earnest and touching voice, “to tell you the story of the man who built his house on sand.”
Madame Kang rose. “Excuse me,” she said in her loud somewhat flat voice. “I left my family affairs unsettled.”
She bowed and walked out of the court with her heavy solid footsteps.
Madame Wu, who had risen, sat down again as soon as she was gone, and calling Ying to her side she gave direction that the broth she had promised was to be sent after Madame Kang for her grandson. Then she smiled faintly at Little Sister Hsia. “Tell me what your lord said to this man who built his house on sand,” she said courteously.
“Dear Madame Wu, he is your Lord, too,” Little Sister Hsia breathed. “You have only to accept Him.”
Madame Wu smiled. “It is very kind of him, and you must tell him so,” she said, still courteously. “Now proceed, my friend.”
There was something so unapproachable in Madame Wu’s dignity as she said this that Little Sister Hsia began to read nervously. Her broken accent made the story difficult to follow, but Madame Wu listened gravely, her eyes fixed on the darting goldfish. Twice Ying came to the door of the court and made signs over Little Sister’s bent head, but Madame Wu shook her head slightly. As soon as Little Sister Hsia was finished, however, she rose. “Thank you, Little Sister,” she said. “That was a pleasant story. Please come again when I have time.”
But Little Sister Hsia, who had also been planning a prayer, rose unwillingly, fumbling with her bag and her spectacles and the heavy book.
“Shall we not have a little prayer?” Her mistaken accent really said “cake” instead of “prayer,” and for a moment Madame Wu was confused. They had had cakes, had they not? Then she understood and in kindness did not smile.
“You pray for me at home, Little Sister,” she said. “Just now I have other duties.”
She began walking toward the door of the court as she spoke, and Ying suddenly appeared and took over Little Sister Hsia, and Madame Wu was alone again. She returned to the pool and stood looking down in it, her slender figure reflected in it quite clearly from head to foot. The orchids, she discovered, were still in her hand, and she lifted that hand and let the flowers fall into the water. A swarm of goldfish darted up and nibbled at the orchids and swerved away again.
“Nothing but flowers,” she said, and laughed a little at them. They were always hungry! A house built on sand? But she could never be so foolish. This house in which she lived had already stood for hundreds of years. Twenty generations of the Wu family had lived and died here.
“Mother, I should have come before to wish you long life.” She heard her eldest son’s voice from the door. She turned.
“Come in, my son,” she said.
“Long life, Mother!” Liangmo said with affection. He had bowed before his mother half playfully when he came in. The Wu family was not quite old-fashioned enough to keep the ancient custom of kneeling obeisance to elders on birthdays, but the bow was in memory of that old custom.
Madame Wu accepted his greeting with a graceful receiving bow. “Thank you, my son,” she said. “Now sit down. I want to talk to you.”
She sat down again in one of the bamboo chairs and motioned him to the other, and he sat down on the edge of it in deference to her.
“How well you look, son,” she said, examining his handsome young face. He was, if possible, more handsome than his father had been at the same age, for she had given him something of her own delicacy, too.
He wore this morning a long robe of summer silk, the color of pale green water. His dark short hair was brushed back, and his dark olive skin was smooth with health and good food. His eyes were quiet with content.
“I have married him happily,” Madame Wu told herself. “And the little child, my grandson?” she asked aloud.
“I have not seen him this morning,” Liangmo replied. “But had he been ill I would have heard of it.”
He could not keep from answering his mother’s smile. There was great affection between them. He trusted her wisdom far more than he did his own, and because of this when she had asked him to marry in order that there would not be confusion in the family because of the marriage of his younger brother ahead of him, he had said at once, “Choose someone for me, Mother. You know me better than I know myself.” He was completely satisfied with Meng, his pretty wife, and with the son she had given him within a year of their marriage. Now she was pregnant again.
“I have been saving some good news for this day, Mother,” he said at this moment.
“It is a day for good news,” Madame Wu replied.
“My son’s mother is to have her second child,” he announced proudly. “Her second moon cycle has passed, and now she is sure. She told me three days ago, and I said we would wait until our mother’s birthday to tell it to the family.”
“That is good news indeed,” Madame Wu said warmly. “You must tell her that I shall send her a present.”
At this moment her eyes fell on the little box of pearls that she had put on a small porcelain table. “I have the gift,” she exclaimed. She took up the box and opened it. “Her own mother gave me, an hour ago, these pearl earrings. But pearls are for young wives, I think, and it would be fitting for me to give them to our daughter. When you return to Meng— No, I will go to her with you. But first, my son, is there anything I should do in regard to our guests today and the feast?”
“Nothing, Mother,” he replied. “We are doing everything for you. Your children want to give you a day of idle joy. You shall not even ask about anything—only enjoy. Where is my father?”
“I doubt he can rise before noon even on my birthday,” Madame Wu said, smiling. “But I told him he must not, indeed. He enjoys the day so much more when he does not get up early, and he will be fresh and happy at the feast.”
“You are too good to us all,” Liangmo said.
She surveyed him with h
er steady beautiful eyes as though she did not hear this. “My son,” she said, “since doubtless we will be interrupted soon, I will speak at once of what I am planning to do. I have decided upon a thing, and yet I feel it is due you, as my eldest son, to tell you what I plan. I have decided to invite your father to take a concubine.”
She said these stupendous words in her calm, pretty voice. Liangmo heard them without understanding them. Then they crowded his mind and deafened him like thunder. His handsome full face paled to the color of cream.
“Mother!” he gasped. “Mother, has he—has my father—”
“Certainly not,” she said. But it struck her with a touch of pain that Liangmo, too, had first asked this question. Was it possible that her husband could so seem to all the sort of man who might …? She put away the unworthy thought. “Your father is still so youthful, although forty-five years old, and he is still so handsome, that it is no wonder that even you, his son, should put that question,” she said. “No, he has been and is most faithful.”
She paused, then with the nearest to diffidence that her son had ever seen in her calm manner, she went on, “No, I have my own reasons for the decision. But I should like to be assured that you, my eldest son, would accept her coming and help the house to accept it when it is known. It is natural that there will be talk and some disturbance. I must not hear the disturbance. But you must hear it and maintain the dignity of your parents.”
By now, although his cheeks were still cream pale, Liangmo had recovered himself. His black eyebrows settled themselves above his eyes, which were like his mother’s. “Of course, the matter is between you and my father,” he said. “But if you will let me step beyond my place, I beg you that if my father has not this wish you will not ask it of him. We are a happy family. How do we know what a strange woman will bring into the house? Her children will be the same age as your grandchildren. Will this not be confusing the generations? If she is very young, will not your sons’ wives be jealous of her position with my father? I can foresee many sorrows.”