But when she heard of my mother she came at once and went to the temple where my mother’s body lay, and casting herself upon the coffin she wept silently for three days without food. When Wang Da Ma told me of it I went to her and raised her up in my arms and brought her to my own house.
She is changed indeed. All her laughter and restlessness is gone, and she dresses no longer in gay silks. She has ceased to paint her lips, and they are carven and pale in her pale face. She is still and gray and silent. Only the old scornfulness remains, and when she heard of the concubines’ disputes among themselves her lips curled. She alone cares nothing to be first.
She avoids all mention of my father. I have heard that she has promised to take poison if he ever comes near her again. Thus has love curdled within her to hatred.
When she heard of the foreign wife of my brother she was silent as if she had heard nothing of what I said. When I spoke to her again of the matter, she listened coldly and replied in a small voice as thin and as sharp as ice,
“It is a great agitation and talk about something which is already decided by nature. Can the son of such a father be faithful? He is all passion now. I know what that is. But wait until her child is born, and her beauty is torn from her as a cover is torn from a book. Does she think he will care to read the book then, even though its pages speak of nothing but love for him?”
And she was not interested. No other word did she speak of my father during the four days she was in my house. All that was once gayety and desire for love in her has died. She is only angry now, always angry at everything, but her anger has no heat. It is cold and reasonless, like a serpent’s anger, and full of venom. I was frightened of her sometimes, and I told my husband after she had gone, and I put my hand into his. He held my hand for a long time between both of his, and at last he said,
“She is a woman scorned. Our old customs have held women lightly, and she was not one who could love easily and so endure it.”
How terrible a thing is love unless it can flow fresh and unchecked from heart to heart!
As for La-may, she returned to the country after the period of mourning for my mother.
In the matter of the other concubines nothing could be decided until my brother’s wife had been recognized, since his legal wife would be the natural one to take his mother’s place as First Lady. The affair now became the more pressing because the house of Li, to whose daughter my brother was still betrothed, began to send messages almost daily through the go-between, urging that the marriage be consummated at once.
Of course my brother did not tell this to the foreign one, but I knew it, and I understood therefore why his face became harried and more anxious as these complications closed in around him. My father received the go-between and while my brother did not actually see them or hear their words, my father did not fail to repeat with affected carelessness and laughter what they said.
Since our mother’s death my brother and the foreigner had renewed their love to each other, and this in itself made like a knife twisted in his vitals all talk to my brother of any other marriage. Although the foreigner had never loved my mother, nevertheless when my brother reproached himself at last for his harshness to his mother in her feebleness, and struck his breast when he thought of how he had hastened her end, she, his wife, bore with him most tenderly.
She listened to his remorse and turned his thoughts gently to the coming child and to the future. She is wise. A woman with a smaller mind would have resented his lamentations for his mother. But when he spoke of the virtues of his mother, as one will speak of those dead, she agreed with him, and with much grace she was silent concerning my mother’s attitude toward herself. She even added to his praises her respect for the strength of my mother’s spirit, turned against her as it was. Pouring himself out thus to his wife, my brother emptied his sorrow, and into that emptiness his love for his wife entered and filled him anew.
Together, then, they remained in their own courts, apart from everything. For a space I myself scarcely saw them. It was as though they lived alone in some far country, and nothing, no one, could touch them. When I went into their presence, although they always welcomed me, quickly and without knowing it they forgot me. Their eyes met secretly and spoke to each other, even while their lips spoke to me. If they were apart so much as the length of the room, they drifted nearer, unconscious of it themselves, but restless until they were within reach of each other.
I think it was during these days of renewal of love that my brother began to see clearly what he must do. A certain calm spread over his spirit as he became willing to give up everything for her, and his body ceased its restlessness.
Watching them I marveled that only warmth came into my heart for them. Had I ever seen them thus before my marriage I should have sickened at such emotion between man and wife. It would have been a sight without dignity in my eyes, since I could not have understood it. I should have belittled love itself and thought it fit only for concubines and slave-girls.
And now, you see how I am changed, and how my lord has taught me! I knew nothing indeed until he came.
Thus they lived together, waiting for the future, these two, my brother and his foreign wife.
And yet my brother was not wholly happy. She was happy! It was nothing to her now that she was not a member of my brother’s family. With the passing of his mother, in spite of her sympathy, a sort of bondage dropped from her. With the knowledge of her child living within her, she was relieved of some fear she had had before. She thought of nothing now except her husband and herself and their child. Feeling the child stirring she smiled and said,
“It is this little person who will teach me everything. I will learn from him how to belong to my husband’s country and race. He will show me what his father is like — what he was from the time he was a baby until manhood. I can never be separate and alone any more.”
And again she said to her husband,
“It does not matter whether your family will receive me or not, now. Your bone and blood and brain have entered into my being, and I will give birth to the son of you and of your people.”
But my brother was not satisfied with this law of the spirit. He reverenced her when she spoke thus, but he went from her presence, his anger hot against his father. He said to me,
“We can live alone forever, we two, but shall we deprive the child of his heritage? Have we the right if we would?”
But I could not answer him anything, for I do not know what is wise.
When the time for the child’s birth drew near, therefore, so that it might be hourly expected, my brother went yet once more to my father to ask his formal recognition of his wife. I will tell you, My Sister, what my brother told me.
He said he went into his father’s apartments, trying to reassure himself with the favor which his father in the past had shown to his wife. While much that had been done and said was not courteous in meaning, yet my brother hoped that there might be some growth of real liking come out of it. He bowed his head before his father. He said,
“My honored Father, now that the First Lady, my honored mother, has departed to dwell beside the Yellow Springs, I, your unworthy son, beg you to deign to hear me.”
His father was sitting beside the table drinking. Now he inclined his head, smiled, and still smiling, he poured wine from the silver jug and sipped it delicately from the tiny jade wine bowl in his hand. He answered nothing. My brother therefore was encouraged to continue.