“Now that your father has gone, I am your mother,” Madame Wu said, smiling. The orphan children looked at her with love, and suddenly for the first time in her life Madame Wu felt the true pangs of birth in her being. She felt her being divided and merge again with another nature far larger than her own. These children were André’s and hers.
“All are my children,” she said, wondering that the words could be hers. At the sound of her voice the children rushed to her to embrace her, to touch her, to lean against her. She looked down at them and saw their small lacks and defects as well as their beauty. But she felt no dislike.
“Your father did the best he could for you,” she said, smiling, “but you need a mother, too.” She touched a sore red scar on a child’s cheek. “Does it still hurt?” she asked.
“A little,” the child replied.
“And how did you come by it?” Madame Wu asked.
The child hung her head. “My mistress held the end of her cigarette against me there—”
“Oh, why?” Madame Wu asked.
“I was her slave — and I couldn’t move fast enough—” the child replied.
She put her hand into Madame Wu’s. “Will you give me a name?” she begged. “He was going to give me a name and then died too soon. All the others have names.”
“They shall tell me their names, and then I shall know what to name you,” Madame Wu replied.
One by one they repeated their names, and each name was a word spoken from André.
Pity; Faith; Humility; Grace; Truth; Mercy; Light; Song; Star; Moonbeam; Sunbeam; Dawn; Joy; Clarity — such were the names he had given the older ones. The younger ones he had called playful names. Kitten and Snowbird and Rosepetal and Acorn, Silver and Gold. “Because he said silver and gold had he none,” these two small creatures proclaimed, “until we came.”
They all laughed at such nonsense. “He did make us laugh every day,” Gold said. She was a round little creature, and she clutched Silver by the hand.
“Are you sisters?” Madame Wu asked, smiling.
“We are all sisters,” twenty voices cried.
“Of course,” Madame Wu agreed. “I am stupid.”
The scarred child pressed her close. “And my name?” she asked.
Madame Wu looked down into the tender face. The child was exquisite, a bud of a child, full of beauty to come. The name rose in Madame Wu’s mind. “I will call you Love,” she said.
“I am Love,” the child repeated.
By now the court was fringed with silent onlookers. The servants in the house had made one excuse and another to pass this way to stop and stare, but the children of the household and the lesser relatives made no pretense of errands. They stood gaping at this new Madame Wu. At last Jasmine, who had grown weary of waiting in the entrance hall, rose and came to the court herself, and behind her came her servant. Jasmine had braced herself to be very strong and to demand her rights as one who had within herself hope of a son for the house.
But instead of the stern proud lady whom she had expected to see, this morning she saw a gentle beautiful woman laughing in the midst of beggar children. Madame Wu looked up at the bustle behind the pillars of the veranda, and their eyes met.
“You see I have many children,” Madame Wu said, smiling, “but I have not forgotten you. When I have planned where they are to sleep and play, I will talk with you.”
She turned to the relatives. None of them were sons or sons’ wives. They were only old cousins and poor nephews who, having no shelter elsewhere, had returned to the ancestral house to find a corner here and a bed there.
“Where shall we house my children?” she asked gaily.
“Our Sister,” an old widow answered, “if you are doing good deeds, let them be housed in the family temple.”
Madame Wu had been without any anxiety whatever, but she simply had not known where to put these children. Now she accepted the widow’s words at once. “How wise you are,” she said gratefully. “No home could be better than our temple. There are courts to play in, and the pool and the fountain. The family gods will have something to do now.”
She led the way as she spoke, and the children ran after her in the sunlight, and the old woman hobbled after them. In the very back of the Wu courts there was a large old temple, built by one of the women ancestors two hundred years before. She had desired to become a nun after her husband died, and yet she did not wish to leave her home to live in a public temple. So she had built here within the shelter of the house walls a beautiful temple where she lived with the gods until she died nearly one hundred years old. Since then a priest had been appointed to care for the temple, none being allowed to serve who were under fifty years of age because of the many young women in the house.
Madame Wu, although skeptic, had nevertheless allowed the priest to continue and had maintained the temple, paying for the gilding of the gods once every ten years and once a year allowing a sum for incense. Such of the family as wished could worship here, and it was considered a benefit that women need not go to outside temples to worship and be perhaps exposed to lewd priests.
To this temple she now led the children. She paused for one moment on the wide stone threshold. Two gate gods loomed above her, one black, one white.
“But will these gods offend André?” she asked herself. “His religion had no gods like these.”
She seemed to hear his mighty laughter, echoing among the painted beams high above the heads of the gods.
She smiled in reply and, holding by the hand the child she had named Love, she stepped over the high wooden doorsteps and into the temple. The air was fragrant with incense and lilies. Incense burned before the gods, and lilies bloomed in the court. The old priest, hearing footsteps, came running in from his kitchen. He had been burning grass for cooking of his meal, and his face and hands were sooty.
He stared at the crowd of children and at Madame Wu. “I am bringing gifts,” she said. “Tell him your names, children.”
One by one they called their names in their soft gay voices.
“And this one,” Madame Wu ended, “is Love. They are all gifts for the temple.”
Now, the old priest had heard of what had happened. He took it that Madame Wu wished to do good deeds before Heaven and so he could not forbid it, however difficult it might be for him. He bowed and clasped his sooty hands and fell back against one god after another as he retreated before Madame Wu, who swept on into the temple, assigning rooms where until now only gods had stood silently gazing into the courts of the Wu family.
“This room is for the little ones,” she said, “because the Goddess of Mercy is here, and she will watch over you for me during the night. This room is for the big ones, because there is space for everybody, and you must help to keep it very clean.”
Then she felt the child Love cling to her. “Let me come with you,” she begged Madame Wu. “I will wash your clothes and serve your food. I can do everything.”
Madame Wu’s heart turned into warm flame. But she was just. She knew that André would not have showed favor to one above another. She shook her head. “You must stay and help the others,” she said. “That is what your father would have wished.” Then she knew it was not all justice. She wanted no one with her, to share her life with him.
“Where shall we sleep, Our Mother?” the children asked of Madame Wu.
“By night there will be beds,” she said. “But first you must play all day long.”
And seeing them happy, she left them with the gods.
Jasmine pursed her red mouth and looked hard at the corner of her brightly flowered silk kerchief. One corner of it was fastened to the glass button on her left shoulder, and it hung from this like a scarf. With the kerchief she concealed her face, or she played with it when she wished not to look at the one to whom she was talking.