He leaned forward, his hands clasped between his knees, still staring at her.
“I have been a good wife to you,” she said.
“Have I not been a good husband to you?” he asked.
“That, always,” she replied. “As men and women go, there could not be better than we have had. But now the half of my life is over.”
“Only half,” he said.
“Yet the half of yours is far away,” she went on. “Heaven has made this difference between men and women.”
He listened as he listened to anything she said, as though he knew that her words always carried a weight of meaning beyond their bare frame and beyond, perhaps, his comprehension.
“You are a young man still,” she went on. “Your fires are burning and strong. You ought to have more sons. But I have completed myself.”
He straightened his lounging body, and his full handsome face grew stern. “Can it be that I understand what you mean?” he asked.
“I see that you do understand,” she replied.
They looked at each other across the twenty-four years they had spent together in this house where their children now slept, where Old Lady slept her light, aged sleep while she waited to die.
“I do not want another woman.” His voice was rough. “I have never looked at another woman. You have been more beautiful than any woman I ever saw, and you are still more beautiful now than any woman.”
He hesitated, and his eyes fell from her face to his hands. “I saw that young girl today — and I thought when I saw her, how much more beautiful are you than she!”
She knew at once what young girl he meant. “Ah, Linyi is pretty,” she agreed. Inwardly she renewed her decision. When the talk had proceeded to the matter of who should choose another woman for him, she would choose. It would be ill for the house if the generations were mingled, and Liangmo was already married to Meng, the sister of Linyi, who were both daughters of her own closest friend.
He pursed his smooth full lips. “No,” he said, “I will not agree to your plan. What would my friends say? I have never been a man to go after women.”
She laughed softly and was amazed as she laughed that she suffered a small pang in her breast, like the prick of a dagger that does not pierce the skin. If he could begin to think of how it would seem to his friends, then he would be soon persuaded, sooner than she had thought.
“It looks very ill for a woman over forty to bear a child,” she said. “Your friends would blame you for that, too.”
“Is it necessary for you to bear a child?” he retorted.
“It is always possible,” she replied. “I should like to be spared the fear of embarrassing you.”
He spoke of friends and she of shame. They had not yet come together. She must dig into his heart and pull her roots out of him, unless they were too deep.
He looked at her. “Have you ceased altogether to love me?” he asked.
She leaned forward toward him. This now was heart to heart. “I love you as well as ever,” she said in her beautiful voice. “I want nothing but your happiness.”
“How can this be my happiness?” he asked sadly.
“You know that I have always held your happiness in my hands,” she replied. She lifted her two hands as though they held a heart. “I have held it like this, ever since the moment I first saw your face on our wedding day. I shall hold it like this until I die.”
“My happiness would be buried with you if you should die before me,” he said.
“No, for before I die, I will put it into other hands, the hands which I will prepare for it,” she said.
She saw her power over him gaining its way. He sat motionless, his eyes on her hands. “Trust me,” she whispered, still holding her hands like a cup.
“I have always trusted you,” he said.
She let her hands fall.
He went on doggedly, “I do not promise, I cannot, so quickly—”
“You need not promise anything,” she said. “I shall not force you even if I could. When was force ever my way? No, we will put this aside now. Go back into the bed and let me cover you. The night is growing cool because it is so near dawn. You must sleep and do not wake early.”
She guided him by quick soft pressures on his shoulders, on his arms and hands. He obeyed her unwillingly, and yet he did obey her. “Mind you that I have promised you nothing,” he kept saying.
“Nothing,” she agreed, “nothing!” And she drew the covers over him and put back one curtain for air and let down the other against the morning light when it came.
But he held her hand fast. “Where will you sleep?” he demanded.
“Oh — I have my bed ready,” she said, half-playfully. “Tomorrow we will meet. Nothing will be changed in the house. We will be friends, I promise you, not separated by fears and shames—”
He let her go, lulled by her promising, beautiful voice. She could always lull him. He never believed the fullness of all she meant.
And when he had dropped into sleep she went away and walked softly and alone through the courts to the court next Old Lady’s. By her order it had been kept clean and ready through the years since Old Gentleman had died, and only a few days ago she had seen to it that fresh bedding was laid ready upon the mattress of the bed. Into this new bedding she now crept. It felt chill and too new, and she trembled for a moment with the chill and with a strange sudden deathlike fatigue. Then, as though it were a sort of death into which she had come, dreamlessly she fell asleep.
II
BUT IT IS MORNING which sets the seal upon what the night has made. Right or wrong is clear only by the sun. Madame Wu woke on this day after her fortieth birthday with a new feeling of lightness. Her eyes fell upon the known but unfamiliar room. This room was very different from the one in which she had slept for years. That one had been decorated for a young woman, a woman who was wed to a man and was expected to bear him children. The embroideries upon the curtains of that bed were of fruits and signs of fecundity. That room she had left last night was just as it had been when Old Lady had sent her into it as a bride for her only son. Old Lady had bought such strong satins and such fast-colored silks for the embroidered canopy that there was still no excuse after twenty-four years to buy a new one. The only object which Madame Wu had added to the room was the picture of the human creature struggling up the mountain. She missed this picture now. Today she must have it brought here with her clothes and her toilet articles. Beyond that, her old room would be very suitable for a new young concubine. Let the fruits and fecund signs be for that one!
Madame Wu lay in her new bed alone. It was an even vaster bed than the one she had left, and as she lay in it she delicately probed her heart. Did she suffer to think that another would lie under the rose-fed satin covers of her marriage bed? She did feel some sort of faint, distant pain, but it was neither close nor personal. It was a large pain, the pain which one must suffer when Heaven in its impenetrable wisdom decrees against the single soul. Thus she knew it would have been ineffably good and comforting to her had it been possible for Mr. Wu to have been ready to enter into the latter half of life with her. It would have been a miracle of content for her if out of his own fulfillment, and without sacrifice, he could have reached the same point of life that she had at the same time that she did.
She pondered for a long time. Why had Heaven not made women twice as long-lived as men, so that their beauty and fertility might last as long as man lived and fade only with the generation? Why should a man’s need to plant his seed continue too long for fulfillment in one woman?
“Women,” she thought, “must therefore be more lonely than men. Part of their life must be spent alone, and so Heaven has prepared them.”