“Our Father, had I not better read the wicked books?” she had asked so suddenly that Old Gentleman had started. She was surprised and then even a little shocked to see a certain diffidence in his eyes. He had been looking at her with his usual mild directness. Now to evade her he turned to the teapot on the table.
She had stepped forward. “Let me pour it for you,” she had said and did so. He sipped his tea for a moment before he answered. Then he said, still not looking at her, “Child, you will not understand me, perhaps. But believe me without understanding. It is better that you do not read these books. Men love women when they are not too knowing. You are so wise already, so very wise for your youth. You do not need these books. Apply your own mind, now fresh and pure, to the task of making my son happy. Learn love at the source, my child, not out of books.”
For a moment it had seemed to her that this was no answer at all. Then, standing there by the table, leaning on her hands as she looked at him, she perceived that he was the wisest soul in all the world, and that until her wisdom matched his she had better believe him.
“I will obey you, my father,” she had said, and so she had obeyed him for twenty years and more.
But today, alone in this room where they had once been, sitting in the chair which had once been only his, it seemed to her that now her wisdom did match his and her obedience had been fulfilled. She was free of Old Gentleman, too, at last.
So she rose and went, her heart beating strangely, toward the forbidden books. She knew the names of some of them, the names of novels and stories which she had always been taught the true scholar never reads because they are beneath him. Only the low and the coarse, who cannot bear the high ether of spirit and thought, can be allowed the diversion of such books. Yet all men read them, yes, even the scholars, too! Old Gentleman himself had read them and he had allowed his son to read them, knowing that if he did not, his son would read them anyway.
“What all men know,” Madame Wu now asked herself, “ought not a woman to know?”
She chose a book at random. It was a long book. Many thin volumes lay in the clothbound box. The name of the book she had heard. Among the many women in a house as large as her mother’s and as large as the Wu house, there were always some who were coarse in their talk. The story of Hsi Men Ch’ing and his six wives all had heard in one way or another. Plum Flower in a Vase of Gold—the letters were here delicately brushed on the satin cover of this first volume.
“The books look often read,” she thought and smiled with a fleeting bitter mirth. Generations of men of the Wu house had read them, doubtless, but perhaps she was the first woman who had ever held them in her hand.
She took them to the table and looked first at the pictures. An artist had drawn them. There was profound art in the sensuous lines. She studied especially the face of Hsi Men Ch’ing himself. The artist had outdone himself in describing through pictures the decay of man. The young handsome joyous face of Hsi Men Ch’ing, who had found the expression of his youth in love of women’s flesh, had grown loathsome as the face of a man dead by drowning and bloated with decay. Madame Wu gazed thoughtfully at each picture and perceived the deep meaning of the story. It was the story of a man who lived without his mind or spirit. It was the story of a man’s body, in which his soul struggled, starved, and died.
She began to read. The hours passed. She heard Ying stirring about in the other room, but she did not know that Ying looked in at the door and stared at her and went away again. She became aware of the time only when darkness stole into the room and she could no longer see. Then she looked about as though she did not know where she was.
“I ought not to have obeyed Old Gentleman,” she murmured half-aloud. “I should have read this book long ago.” But now she had stopped reading she did not want to begin it again. She was surfeited and sick. She bound the volumes together into the box and slipped the small ivory catch into its loop and set it on the shelves again. Then she put her hands to her cheeks, and thus she walked back and forth the length of the room. No, it was better, she thought, that she had not read this book when she was young. Now that she had put it into its cover again she saw that it was a very evil book. For such was the genius of the writer that the reader could find in this book whatever he wanted. For those who wanted evil, it was all evil. For those who were wise, it was a book of most sorrowful wisdom. But Old Gentleman was right. Such a book ought not to be put into the hands of the young. Even she, had she read it twenty years ago, could she have understood the wisdom? Would she not rather have been so sickened that she could not have gone willingly to bed at night? Old Gentleman was still the wisest soul. The very young are not ready for much knowledge. It must be given to them slowly, in proportion to their years of life. One must first live before he can safely know.
It was at this moment of her musing that Ying stood at the door again. Her solid shadow was black against the gray of the twilight. In the court behind her was another shadow.
Ying spoke. “Lady, the old woman Liu has come — the girl is here.”
Madame Wu’s hands flew to her cheeks again. For an instant she did not answer. Then she took her hands away. She moved to the chair and sat down.
“Light the candle,” she commanded Ying, “and bring her here alone. I will not see the old woman.”
Ying moved aside in silence, and at the door Madame Wu saw the girl. The candlelight fell on her full but gently. Madame Wu saw almost exactly the face she had imagined and almost exactly the figure. A healthy, red-cheeked girl gazed back at her with round childlike eyes, large and very black. Her black hair was coiled at her neck and fell over her forehead in a fringe, in the fashion of a countrywoman. She held a knotted kerchief in her hand.
“What is that in your hand?” Madame Wu asked. “I told them you were to bring nothing.” The girl looked so innocent, so childlike, that she could only speak these simple words.
“I brought you some eggs,” the girl answered. “I thought you might like them, and I had nothing else. They are very fresh.” She had a pleasant voice, hearty but a little shy.
“Come here, let me see the eggs,” Madame Wu said.
The girl came forward somewhat timidly, tiptoeing as though she feared she might make a noise in the intense quiet of the room. Madame Wu looked down at her feet. “I see your feet have not been bound,” she said.
The girl looked abashed. “There was no one to bind them,” she replied. “Besides, I have always had to work in the fields.”
Ying spoke. “She has very big feet, Lady. Doubtless she has gone barefoot as country children do, and her feet have grown coarse.”
The girl stood looking anxiously from Ying’s face to Madame Wu.
“Come, show me the eggs,” Madame Wu commanded her again.
The girl came forward then and put the bundle on the table carefully. Then she untied the kerchief and picked up each egg and examined it. “Not one is broken,” she exclaimed. “I was afraid that I might stumble in the darkness and crush them. There are fifteen—”
She paused, and Madame Wu understood that she did not know what or how to address her.
“You may call me Elder Sister,” she said.
But the girl was too shy for this. She repeated, “Fifteen eggs and not one is older than seven days. They are for you to eat.”
“Thank you,” Madame Wu said. “They do look very fresh.”
She had already perceived several things about this girl as she stood near her. Her breath was sweet and clean, and from her flesh there came only the odors of health. Her teeth were sound and white. The hands that had untied the kerchief were brown and rough but well-shaped. Under the washed blue cotton coat and trousers, the girl’s body was rounded without fat. Her neck was smooth, and her face was innocently pretty.