She said this in her pretty voice, neither lifting nor deepening it, and Ch’iuming’s face grew frightened. “But where shall I go?” she stammered.
Madame Wu saw that Ch’iuming had altogether failed to understand her, and that she thought that she was being told courteously, in the way of the rich and the great, that she was useless and not wanted.
“I do not want you to go anywhere,” Madame Wu said. “I am only saying that I have done wrong to you. Let me put it thus: If you had your own way, if there were no one to consider, what would you do with yourself?”
“How can there be no one to consider?” Ch’iuming asked, perplexed. “There is our lord and there is you. And beyond you two honorable ones, there is the whole family.”
“Why did you ask the foreign priest to take your child if you died?” Madame Wu asked.
“I did not want to trouble you with a girl,” Ch’iuming said.
“Why did you try to die before your destiny day?” Madame Wu asked again.
“Because Ying told me she saw from my shape that I would give birth to a girl, and so I said, in my heart, we will both go together and be no trouble to anybody.”
“Death can be a trouble as well as life,” Madame Wu said.
“Not mine,” Ch’iuming replied innocently, “for I am of no worth to anyone.”
To this Madame Wu had no answer. She rose, feeling for the moment entirely helpless. “Give up these thoughts,” she exclaimed. “Should you die, it would be a great trouble to bring up this child, and you know that I have never been one of those who think a female child can be allowed to die.”
“You are good,” Ch’iuming said, and she closed her eyes again. The tears crept out from under her eyelids. This Madame Wu saw, but she saw also that Ch’iuming’s arm now held the child very tightly, and so she took it for a good sign and went away.
When she was crossing the courtyard she met Mr. Wu coming in from the street. They came face to face without expecting it, and she perceived instantly that he had been doing something which she would not approve, for his face flushed and a light sweat broke out on his forehead.
“Mother of my sons!” he exclaimed.
“I have just been in to see our Second Lady,” she said amiably. “We must think about her case. She tried to die because she feared the child would be a girl, and that the two of them would be a burden in the house.”
“How foolish!” he exclaimed. “As if we were common people, who consider one mouth more or less!”
“I will turn back with you,” Madame Wu said. “I have need of your wisdom.” They went back together and came into the large square room where they had spent so many hours in their common life. Beyond them was the bedroom where Ch’iuming lay with her child on her arm, but there was no danger of their being overheard. Above them the roof rose into high beamed spaces and swallowed any human voice.
“Now we have this life in our house,” Madame Wu said, “what shall we do with her, and the one she has brought? For I see that she is not to your heart. Yet here she is. I must apologize to you.”
Mr. Wu looked uncomfortable. He had put on one fur robe too many this morning, and the day had turned milder than the morning, and he went easily hot in any discomfort, even in winter.
“I feel ashamed that I — after your thoughtfulness—” he stammered. “Well, she is good enough. But you know how it is. Goodness is excellent in a woman. But—”
“I was very selfish,” she said simply. She sat in her usual pose with her hands folded on her lap. She did not look at him. Instead she gazed thoughtfully at the shadows on the floor. They were now of the winter bamboo which stood about the sunlit open door, and the arrowy leaves danced in the wind. She thought of Brother André, and suddenly she understood what he had meant. She could never be free until she had offered herself up utterly, and this she could only do by taking upon herself the thing which she most hated.
“I see my wrong,” she said, without lifting her eyes. “Let it all be as you wish. We will send Ch’iuming away if you like. And I will return. We will forget, you and I, these last months.”
She waited for his welcoming cry, but it did not come. When the silence grew sharp she looked up and saw his ruddy face now streaming with sweat. He laughed with misery when he saw her looking at him and snatched open his collar, and pulled out his silk handkerchief and wiped his face.
“Had I known,” he gasped, “had I dreamed—”
An ice-cold pressure crept into her heart. He did not want her. What she had heard was true. He had found someone else for himself.
“Tell me about her,” she said gently.
Halting and stammering, with grunts of embarrassed laughter, he told her that he wondered if he should not now put Jasmine into a separate house. She was young, she was childish.
“I do not want to add to your cares under this roof,” he said.
She opened her long and lovely eyes. “Can it add to my cares if you are happy?” she asked in her most silvery voice. “Let her come and live under your own roof. Why should your house be divided?”
He rose and went over to her and took her hand. It lay in his plump palm, cool and limp. “You are a good woman,” he said solemnly. “It is not given to every man to have what he wants and at the same time to live in peace under his own roof.”
She smiled and took her hand away.
But long after they had parted she was amazed at the coldness in the pleasure she had felt. For her to choose a woman to take her place was one thing. To have him choose a woman was quite another. She marveled at the tangle that life could make between a man and a woman. She had thought herself free of him because she did not love him. But she was not free of him if when she knew his love had ceased she could feel this wounded pride. Brother André had been right. She thought always and only of her self.
“How shall I be rid of myself?” she asked Brother André.
“Think only of others,” he replied.
“Does that mean I am always to yield to others?” she asked.
“If not to yield means that you are thinking of yourself, you must yield,” he said.
“My sons’ father wants to bring another woman into the house,” she said. “Am I to yield to that?”
“It was your sin that brought the first woman here,” he said.
She was angry at this in her fashion. A gust of sharp temper flew like a sudden small whirlwind out of her heart.
“Now you speak like a priest,” she said maliciously. “You can have no understanding of what it is to be compelled to yield your body to a man year after year, without your will.” She felt in herself a strange desire to make him share her unhappiness, and she went on, sparing him nothing. “To give one’s delicate body to indelicate hands, to see lust grow hot and feel one’s own flesh grow cold — to feel the heart grow faint and the mind sick, and yet to be compelled, for the sake of peace in the house.”
His face was pure and unchanged. “There are many ways in which the body may be offered up a sacrifice for the soul,” he said.
She sighed. “Shall I allow this second woman to come in?”
“Is it not better to have her under this roof with your consent than under another without?” he replied.
“I never thought a foreign priest would give me such advice,” she said with new malice.
She opened her book without further talk, and under his direction she studied the poetry of the Hebrew Psalms. She was deeply moved as the hour went on by what she discerned they were. Here the human heart cried out after that which it could worship. And what was worship except trust and hope that life and death had meaning because they were created and planned by Heaven?