And her son’s wife sat straight and stiff, very pretty but cold in looks, and pretended she heard nothing of all this talk. But the concubine, being easy in her temper and one to keep the peace always, answered amiably, “I do not mind, lady. I like to be busy.”
So she did busy herself about a score of little things and kept the peace for all, a ruddy, plain woman, healthy and sound and always smiling, whose great happiness was to be left for a little while to do embroideries upon her shoes or upon the shoes of her children. She kept by her always her bits of satin, her fine-cut paper patterns for flowers and birds and leaves, and all her many colored silks she hung ready about her neck, and around her middle finger always was her brass ring thimble, so always there, that many times at night she forgot and slept with it, or she would search for it and wonder and then find it still on her finger and burst into loudest merry childlike laughter at herself until all must laugh who heard her.
In all this family talk and noise, the whines of children and the bustle of the food, the learned lady maintained her quiet dignity, answering if one spoke to her, eating delicately but without undue heed to what she ate, and courteous even to a child. Her mild grave eye could by its very meditative gravity check Ai-lan’s too quick tongue and too shining eyes that must see any cause for laughter, and somehow in this whole company her presence sat, beneficent and kind, and made them all more kind and courteous. Yuan saw it and respected her the more and was proud to call her mother.
For a little time Yuan lived carefree as he never had dreamed a life could be. He trusted everything to the lady and obeyed her as though he were her little child, except he obeyed her joyfully and eagerly, because she never laid a command on him at all but always asked him if a certain plan she had was what he liked best to do, and she put it so kindly that to Yuan it seemed always what he would have chosen himself if he had thought of it first. She said to him one early day, when they sat alone at the morning meal to which Ai-lan never came, “My son, it is not kind to leave your father ignorant of where you are. If you like it, I will write a letter to him myself and tell him you are safely with me, and that you are safe from his enemies, since here in this coastal city we are under the government of foreigners, and they do not let wars come here. And I will beg him to let you free from this marriage and let you choose some day for yourself as the young do nowadays, and I will tell him that you are to go to school here and that you are well and that I will care for you, for you are my own son.”
Yuan had not been all at ease about his father. In the daytime, when he went here and there upon the streets to see the sights, when he was swept among the strange city people or when he was in this clean and quiet house and busy with the books he had bought to go to the new school, he could remember to be willful and he could cry out it was his right to live this free life and his father could not force him to come back. But in the nights or when in the dark morning he awoke, not being used yet to the noise that came up early from the streets, then freedom seemed a thing impossible, and some of the old childhood fear came back on him and he cried to himself, “I doubt I can stay on here. What if he comes and fetches me back again with his soldiers?”
At such times Yuan forgot all his father’s many kindnesses and much love, and he forgot his father’s age and illness, and he only remembered how his father often was angry and that he was always bent upon having his own will, and then Yuan felt the old sad careworn fears of childhood come on him again. Many times already he had planned how to write his father, and how to make the letter pleading, or if his father came, how he could hide again.
So now when the lady said this, it seemed the easiest, surest way, and he cried gratefully, “It is the best thing, mother, to help me.” And when he had thought a little while as he ate, his heart released itself, and he dared to be a little willful and he said, “Only when you write, write very plainly, because his eyes are not so good as they were, and be sure you make it plain I will not come back to be wed by him. I will never go back again, not even to see him, if I am to be in danger of such slavery.”
The lady smiled peaceably at his passion, and she said mildly, “Aye, I will say it, but more courteously,” and she seemed so calm and sure that Yuan let his last fears go and trusted her as he might have had he been born of her own flesh. He feared no more, but felt his life here safe and sure, and he turned ardently to all its many parts.
Hitherto Yuan’s life had been most simple. In his father’s courts there were but the few things he could do that he had always done, and in the school of war, the only other place he knew, there had been much the same simplicity of books and studied warfare, and the bickering and friendship of the lads be knew in the few short hours they had for play, for there they were not allowed to wander at their will among the people, but were schooled most sternly for their cause and the coming warfare for it.
But in this great noisy hurried city Yuan found his life like a book whose pages he must read all at once, so that he lived a score of different kinds of life, and he was so greedy and so kindled and so eager that he could not bear to let any of them pass him by.
Nearest to him in this house was the merry life he craved. Yuan, who had never laughed with other children or played or forgot his duty, now found a new late childhood with his sister Ai-lan. These two could bicker without anger and could play at some game or other of their own and set each other laughing until Yuan forgot everything except his laughter. At first he was shy with her, and only smiled instead of laughing, and his heart was hindered so it could not come out freely. He had been so long taught that he should be sober and should move with dignity and slowness and keep his face grave and straight and answer with full thought, that he did not know what to do with this teasing maid who mocked at him and copied his grave looks upon her little shining face, and made it look so like his own long one that the lady could not but smile, and even Yuan must laugh, although at first he did not quite know if he liked to be so mocked or not, since no one had ever done it before. But Ai-lan would not have him grave at all. No, she would not rest until she had him answering her wit, and she was just enough to cry applause when he said a good thing, too.
One day she cried, “Mother, this old sage of ours is growing young again, I do declare! We’ll make a boy of him again. I know what we must do — we must buy him some foreign clothes, and I will teach him to dance and he shall go with me sometimes to dance!”
But this was too much for Yuan’s new-found merriment. He knew that Ai-lan went out often for this foreign pleasure called dancing, and he had seen it sometimes at night in passing by some gay lighted house, but it always made him look away, it seemed so bold a thing to do that a man should clasp a woman to him closely, who was not his wife, and even though she were his wife it seemed a thing not to be done thus publicly. But when Ai-lan saw his sudden gravity, she grew very willful and persisted in her notion, and when he said shyly in excuse, “I could never do it. My legs are too long,” she answered, “The legs of some foreign men are longer than yours are and yet they do it. The other night I danced with a white man at Louise Ling’s house, and I swear my hair kept catching on his waistcoat button, and yet he danced like a tall tree in the wind. No, think of some other reason, Yuan!”