“You have cut down the Pride of China tree,” Old Lady said accusingly.
Madame Wu, who had risen and come to her side, smiled. “Those trees spring up so easily,” she said, “and they grow so quickly. This one was not planted. It had only pushed itself up between two stones.”
Old Lady sighed and walked on toward the door. When Madame Wu took her elbow she pushed her half spitefully. “Don’t touch me,” she said peevishly. “I am very angry with you.”
Madame Wu did not answer. She followed Old Lady into the sitting room. “You didn’t tell me you were moving in here,” Old Lady said in her harsh high old voice. “I am never told anything in this house.” She sat down as she spoke.
“I should have told you,” Madame Wu agreed. “It was very wrong of me. I must ask you to forgive me.”
Old Lady grunted. “Have you quarreled with my son?” she asked severely.
“Not at all,” Madame Wu replied. “Indeed, we never quarrel.”
“Do not make words for me,” Old Lady commanded. “I am able to hear the truth.”
“I will not make words, Mother,” Madame Wu replied. “Yesterday I was forty years old. I had long made up my mind that when that day came I would retire from my duties as a female and find someone for my lord who is young. He is only forty-five years old. He has many years left him yet.”
Old Lady sat with her lean hands crossed on the dragon’s head and peered at her son’s wife. “Does he love someone else?” she demanded. “If he has been playing in flower houses, I will — I will—”
“No, there is no other woman,” Madame Wu replied. “Your son is the best of men, and he has been nothing but good to me. I am selfish enough to want to keep fresh between us the good love we have had. This cannot be if I am ridden with fear of a belated child, and surely it cannot be if my own fires slacken while his burn on.”
“People will say he has played the fool and you have revenged yourself,” Old Lady said sternly. “Who will believe you have of your own will withdrawn yourself — unless indeed you have ceased to love him?”
“I have not ceased to love him,” Madame Wu said.
“What is love between a man and woman if they don’t go to bed together?” Old Lady inquired.
Madame Wu paused for a long moment before she answered this. “I do not know,” she replied at last. “I have always wondered, and perhaps now I shall find out.”
Old Lady snorted. “I hope that we will not all suffer from this,” she said loudly. “I hope that a new trouble-maker will not come into this house!”
“That must be my care,” Madame Wu admitted. “I should blame myself entirely were such a thing to happen.”
“Where is this new woman?” Old Lady demanded. She was still aggrieved, but she felt anger melting out of her against her will. It was true that no woman wanted to conceive after she was forty. She herself had had this misfortune, but luckily the child had died at birth. Yet she remembered with clarity, as though it were yesterday instead of more than thirty years ago, her deep shame when she knew that at such an age she was pregnant. She had longed for more children until then, and yet when she was forty she wanted no more, and she had quarreled with her husband through all those months of discontented waiting.
“Go and find yourself a whore,” she had told the distressed man. “Go and find yourself some young girl who is always ready!”
Old Gentleman had been deeply pained at such remarks, and he had never come near her again. But he had never loved her so well again, either. She had often been teased by his reticence, for he was gentle and shy as too many books can make a man, but after that he became almost totally silent toward her. Yet she knew that the whole thing had been only an accident, and that he wanted a child of her no more than she did of him. Even now when she remembered her anger against him she felt a vague guilt. What had happened had been merely an act of nature, no more, and why should she have blamed her good old man?
Old Lady sighed. “Where is this woman?” she demanded again, forgetting that she had already asked this.
“I have not found her yet,” Madame Wu said.
The bondmaid was listening to everything while she pretended to serve her old mistress by now pouring tea and now fanning her and now moving a screen so that the sun did not fall on her. But Madame Wu had considered this and had told herself that it was well that all the servants should know everything from the source,
“She will be hard to find,” Old Lady said stubbornly.
“I think not,” Madame Wu replied. “I know exactly what she should be. It remains only not to take any other.”
“Nevertheless,” Old Lady went on, “I still feel I should blame my son.”
“Please do not,” Madame Wu begged her. “To blame him for anything would make him feel he is at fault in some way, and indeed there is no fault in him. He must not be made to feel self-reproach merely because I am forty years old. It would be most unjust.”
Old Lady groaned. “O Heaven, that has made man and woman of two different earths!”
Madame Wu smiled at this. “You may blame Heaven, and I will not deny it.”
There seemed nothing to say after that. Old Lady kept remembering the acuteness of her own like situation many years ago. She would have been angry if her son’s father had taken a younger woman, even when she had cried at him to do so. This woman, her son’s wife, was perhaps wiser.
Her mind slipped a little, as it did often now that she was old, and she looked about her. “Are you changing everything in these rooms?” she asked.
“I shall change nothing,” Madame Wu said, “except that I have brought in that painting from my old room. I was always fond of it.” The picture already hung opposite where she sat, for this morning immediately after she had eaten, she had bade Ying tell a manservant to bring it and hang it here. She had decided not to put it in the bedroom where it had hung before. In this bedroom she would only sleep.
Old Lady rose and went to the scroll and stood before it, leaning on her staff. “Is that a man or woman climbing the mountain?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Madame Wu said. “It does not matter perhaps.”
“Lonely!” Old Lady muttered. “Lonely in the midst of all those mountains! I have always hated mountains.”
“I suppose the person wouldn’t be there if he minded loneliness,” Madame Wu said.
But Old Lady whenever she felt sad immediately felt hunger also. The picture had made her sad.
She turned to Madame Wu with a piteous look. “I am hungry,” she said. “I haven’t eaten anything for hours.”
Madame Wu said to the maid, “Take her back to her own rooms and let her eat anything she wants.”
When Old Lady had gone, she sat down again to her reckoning. For the rest of the day no one came near her. The household was unhappy and silent. She wondered whether Mr. Wu would come to see her, and was surprised to find in herself some sort of shyness at the thought of him. But he, too, did not come near her. She understood exactly what was happening in the great house. The sons and sons’ wives would have been talking half the day, arguing as to what should be done and said, and consulting with cousins and cousins’ wives. Since they had reached no agreement none had come to her, and since elders did not come, children were kept away. As for the servants, it was only natural prudence which kept them quiet and at work until the air in the house had cleared. Only Ying served her all day long, and she said little, although her eyes were freshly red every time she came in. But Madame Wu pretended to see nothing. She spent the entire day on her accounts, which she had allowed to gather in the preparation for her birthday.