And when he was too shy to speak the real reason, she laughed and shook her little forefinger in his face and said, “I know why it is — you think all the maids will fall in love with you and you are afraid of love!”
Then the lady said gently, “Ai-lan — Ai-lan — not too bold, my child,” and Yuan laughed in some discomfort and let the moment pass.
But Ai-lan would not so let it pass, and each day she cried at him, “You shall not escape me, Yuan — I’ll teach you to dance yet!” Many of her days were so filled with hours for merry-making that when she ran in from school, she threw down books and changed her garments to some of gayer hue, and went out again to see a theatre or some picture made so like life that the people moved and spoke, and yet even in these days when she saw Yuan but a moment or two, she could tease him that she would begin tomorrow or tomorrow and he must harden himself to the thought of love.
What it might have come to between himself and Ai-lan, Yuan could not have said, because he was still afraid of the pretty chattering girls who came and went with Ai-lan and whom, though she told him their names and said to them, “This is my brother Yuan,” he still did not know, they all looked so alike and all so pretty. And he was afraid too of something deeper in himself than even these pretty maids, some secret power in himself he feared their little careless hands might stir alive in him.
But one day there came a thing to help Ai-lan in her mischief. There was an evening when Yuan came out of his room to eat the evening meal and he found the lady whom he called his mother waiting for him alone at the table, and the room very quiet since Ai-lan was not there. This was no surprise to Yuan, for often these two ate alone while Ai-lan went to some merry-making with her friends. But this night the lady said in her quiet way, as soon as he had set himself at table, “Yuan, I have wanted for a long time to ask a thing of you, but knowing how busy you have been and eager to get on in all your books, rising early and needing all your sleep, I have not done it. But the truth is I am at the end of my own ability in a certain matter. I must have help, and since I have looked on you as son in truth, I can ask of you what I cannot ask of any other.”
Then Yuan was in great surprise, for this lady was so sure and quiet always, very safe in her content and understanding, that one could not think she needed any sort of aid from anyone. He looked up at her from over the bowl he held and said wondering, “Be sure, mother, I am ready to do anything, because you have been more than own mother to me since I came here. There is not any kindness I have not had from you.”
At the plain goodness in his voice and look, some gravity in the lady broke. Her firm lips trembled and she said, “It is your sister. I have given my life to this girl of mine. I suffered first because she was not a boy. Your own mother and I conceived near together, and then your father went away to a war, and when he came back, we both had given birth. I cannot tell you how much I wanted you, Yuan, to have been mine. Your father never — he never looked at me. I always felt a power for some feeling in him — a strange, deep heart he has, but none has ever had it that I know, except you. I do not know why he hates women so. But I used to know how he longed for a son, and all the months he was away I used to tell myself that if I bore his son — I am not foolish, Yuan, as most women are — my father taught me all his learning. I always thought that if your father would only look at what I really am, see what my heart is, he might have taken comfort in me for the little wisdom I have had. But no, to him I was ever no more than a woman who might bear a son for him — and I bore no son, only Ai-lan. When he came home from war and victory he looked at you, Yuan, in your country mother’s arms. I had dressed Ai-lan as bravely as a boy in red and silver, and she was the prettiest babe. But he never saw her. Time and time again I sent her to him on some pretext or took her to him, for she was so clever and so forward for her age, I felt he must see what she was. But he has the strangest shyness toward all females. He only saw she was a girl. At last in my own loneliness, Yuan, I told myself I would leave his courts — not openly, but with the excuse of schooling for my daughter, and I was sure that I would let Ai-lan have everything a son would have, and do my best against this bondage of a woman’s birth. And he was generous, Yuan — he has sent me money — there has been nothing lacking except he did not care if I were dead or living, or my daughter either. … I help you, not for his sake, but for your own, my son.”
She cast a deep look at him when she said this, and Yuan caught the look, and was confused because he saw thus into this lady’s life and thoughts, and he felt shy and speechless at such knowledge because she was his elder. Then she went on, “So have I spent myself for Ai-lan. And she has been a lovely, merry child. I used to think she must one day be great, perhaps, a great painter or poet, or best of all a doctor as my father was, for there are women doctors nowadays, or at least some leader in this new day for women in our land. It seemed to me this one child I have given birth to must be great and all that I would have been — learned and wise in everything. I never had the foreign learning as I craved to have it. I read her school books now that she has thrown by, and I grieve to see how much there is in them that I can never know. … But I have come to understand now that she will never be very great. Her only gift is in her laughter and in her mockery and in her pretty face and in all her winning ways of gaining hearts. She will not work much at anything. She loves nothing very well except her pleasure — kind she is, but without any depth to kindness. She is kind because life is more pleasant when she is kind than not. Oh, I know my child’s measure, Yuan — I know the stuff I have had to shape. I am not deceived. My dreams are gone. Now all I ask is that she wed wisely somewhere. For she must be wed, Yuan. She is such a one as must be in a man’s care. And she has been bred in such freedom that she will not wed where I might choose, and she is willful, and I live in misery lest she cast herself away on some lad or on some foolish man too old for her. There is even some perverseness in her that for a while made her even look twice at a white man and think it an honor to be seen with him. But I do not fear this now. She has taken another turn. I fear rather a man she is with continually. I cannot always follow her and I do not trust these cousins nor the cousin’s wife. Yuan, to please me, go with her sometimes at night and see if she is safe.”
At this instant while her mother talked so long, Ai-lan came into the room dressed for her merry-making. She wore a long straight robe of deep rose bound about with silver and on her feet were silver shoes, foreign and high at the back, and the collar was cut away from her gown in the newest fashion and her soft neck showed as slim and smooth and golden as a child’s, and the sleeves were cut away, too, just below the shoulder and left bare her pretty arms and hands, slender, yet with no bones to be seen and covered with the softest and most delicate of flesh. Upon her wrists, slight as a child’s yet round as any woman’s, she wore carved silver bracelets, and on each middle finger of her hands were rings of silver and of jade, and her hair was curled about her lovely painted face, as smooth and black as jet. About her shoulders, but not fastened, was a cloak of softest whitest fur, and when she came in she threw this back, and looked smiling, first at Yuan and then at her mother, knowing very well how fair she was and innocently proud in all her beauty.