Of the two young wives, Meng was the more silent. She was too happy in her own life to quarrel with anyone for anything. Liangmo she held to be the handsomest and best of men, and she wondered continually that she had been so fortunate as to be given him for life. There was nothing in him which was not to her taste. His strong young body, his good temper, the sweetness of his ways, his endless kindness, his patience, his ready laughter, the way his lips met each other, the flatness of his cheeks, the heavy smoothness of his black hair, the firm softness of his hands, his dry cool palms — she knew and rejoiced in all. She found no fault in him. She was lost in him and content to be lost. She wanted no being of her own. To be his, to lie in his arms at night, to serve him by day, to fold his garments, to bring his food herself, to pour his tea and light his pipe, to listen to his every word, to busy herself with healing any slight headache, to test the flavor of a dish or the heat of the wine, these were her joys and her occupations. But above all was the bearing of his children. To bear him many children was her sole desire. She was his instrument for immortality.
Now as always when he was present she thought of him and heard the voices of others through the golden haze of her joy in him. That his father might take a concubine only made Liangmo more perfect in her eyes. There was no one like Liangmo. He was better than his father, wiser, more faithful. And Liangmo was content with her.
While Rulan talked, Meng listened, thinking of Liangmo. When Rulan demanded of her, “Meng, you are the eldest son’s wife — what do you think?” then Meng turned to Liangmo to know what she thought.
Be sure Rulan knew this and was contemptuous of Meng for having no mind of her own. She, too, loved her young husband, and she declared to Tsemo often enough when they were alone that she loved him more for not being a fool as Liangmo was. Secretly she grieved because Tsemo was not the elder son. He was stronger than Liangmo, keener, quicker, thin and sharp-tongued. Liangmo was like his father, but Tsemo was like his mother. Even while she quarreled with him she loved him well. But quarrel with him she did very often, hating herself for it while she did it. Every quarrel ended in her stormy repentance, and this repentance came from her constant secret fear, hidden even from herself, because she was older than Tsemo and because she knew that she had loved him before he loved her. Yes, this was her secret shame — that she had set her heart upon him in the school where they had met, and her heart had compelled her to seek him out with ill-concealed excuses of books she could not understand and lecture notes she had lost, and anything she could devise to bring him to her. Hers had been the first offer of friendship, and hers the hand first put out to touch his.
All this she had excused boldly to herself and to him because, she said, she was a new woman, not old-fashioned, not fearful of men, but believing, she said, that men and women were the same. But she knew, all the time, that Tsemo was the younger and that he had never known a woman before, and that he was hard-pressed by her love and had yielded to it, but not with his whole being. “You are afraid of your old-fashioned mother!” she had cried.
To this he had made answer, thoughtfully, “I am afraid of her because she is always right.”
“No one is always right,” Rulan had declared.
“You do not know my mother,” Tsemo had replied, laughing. “Even when I wish her wrong, I know she is right. She is the wisest woman in the world.”
These words he had said innocently, but with them he had thrust a dagger into Rulan’s heart, and there it stayed. She came to the Wu house ready to hate Tsemo’s mother and be jealous of her, and was angry because she could neither hate nor be jealous. For Madame Wu’s cool kindness to all alike gave no handle. If she felt Rulan’s hatred she did not show it, and the young woman soon saw that Madame Wu cared neither for love nor hate.
Nor could the young wife be jealous. In one of their quarrels she had flung this back at Tsemo, “Why do you love your mother so much? She does not love you so much.”
To this Tsemo replied with his usual coolness, “I do not want to be loved too much.”
Thus he flung the barb back again at Rulan and left it in her quivering flesh. But she was easily wounded, her heart always open and ready for hurt, and her pride quivering.
“I suppose you think I love you too much!” she had burst out at Tsemo then.
But this he would not answer. He was of a debonair figure, his shoulders broad, his waist narrow. All the sons were handsome except Yenmo, who was too fat yet, but Tsemo had a certain look more noble than them all. This noble look tortured Rulan. Was it a sign of his soul or only a trick of bones fitted together in his skull and covered with fine flesh and smooth golden skin? She did not know, and he hid the truth from her, or she thought he did.
“Tell me what you are thinking,” she demanded of him often.
Sometimes he told her, sometimes he would not. “Leave me a little privacy,” he said harshly then.
“You do not love me!” she cried too often.
“Do I not?” he would reply, and she cursed her nagging tearing tongue. Yet there were times when he did love her with all the kindness she demanded, and how was she to know what were those times? Alone she raged against his cheerfulness and put herself at the mercy of her own love and longed to be free of it because it made her less than he and dependent on him. But how could she be free of chains she had put upon herself? Her soul was all tempest. The dreams she had once had of her life were dead. She was in prison in the house. And yet who was her jailer except herself?
In this tempest she lived as secretly as she could, but she could not hide it all. Her temper was quick and her scorn hot. She blamed servants easily, and they were not used to discourtesy in this house and so they served her less well than the others in the family and laughed at her in the kitchens, and be sure one always told her of this laughter. And she was peevish often and thought everything inconvenient and old.
“In Shanghai we had self-come water and self-come light,” she would say, and complained against baths bucket-filled and against candles and oil lamps. But who heeded her? She was only one among sixty-odd souls under the Wu roof, and she had not even borne a child yet.
When, therefore, she complained too long this night against his father, Tsemo grew weary of her. He yawned and stretched himself and burst out laughing.
“Our poor father!” he said cheerfully. “After all, it is he whom we must pity, if we are to listen to you, Rulan. We will only see the woman in passing, but he must have her as his burden day and night. Come, girl, it is midnight. Go to bed and rest yourself — and give me rest.”
He rose, shook himself, rubbed his hands through his hair, whistled to her as though she were his dog, and went away. What could she do but follow him to their own court?
III
IN THE MORNING, AFTER a full night’s sleep, Madame Wu woke. This was one of her blessings, that after sleep and when she waked, before her eyes she saw the path like moonlight upon a dark sea, the path she chose to walk. It lay clear before her now.
“I must choose the woman at once,” she told herself. The household could not be at ease in this waiting. She would therefore today send for the old woman go-between and inquire what young women, country bred, might be suitable. She had already brought to her own memory all others that she knew, but there was not one whom she wanted. All were either too high or too low, the daughters of the rich, who would be proud and troublesome, or so foreign-taught that they might even want her put away. Or they were the daughters of the poor who would be equally proud and troublesome. No, she must find some young woman who had neither too much nor too little, so that she might be free from fear and envy. And it would be better, she reflected, if the young woman were wholly a stranger, and her family strangers, too, and if possible, distant, so that when she came into the house she would take up all her roots and bring them here and strike them down afresh.