“It is hard for me to speak,” she said to Madame Wu.
“Surely there is not much to say,” Madame Wu replied.
“There is a great deal to say,” Jasmine said pertly. “If I have no child now, I will have.” She placed her hands on her belly.
Madame Wu looked at her with interest. “You ought to be able to bear a very fat fine child,” she said. “You look strong.”
Jasmine was taken back. “But what will my position be in the house?” she demanded.
“What position do you want?” Madame Wu asked.
“I ought to be the third wife,” Jasmine said sharply. It was strange that so young and pretty a creature could be so sharp. But her round bright eyes, her straight small nose, her pink cheeks and little full mouth all grew sharp and bright together.
“Why not?” Madame Wu said amiably.
“You don’t mind?” Jasmine asked these words in a whisper. The sharpness went out of her face, and the lines of it softened.
“Why should I mind?” Madame Wu asked simply.
“You mean I can live here — in this great house — and be called Third Lady — and when my child—”
“I would not want any child of our house to be illegitimate,” Madame Wu said. “That would be unworthy of our name. You are the vessel that receives the seed. You are to be honored.”
Jasmine stared at her with rounding black eyes and then began to cry in loud coarse sobs. “I thought you would hate me,” she gasped. “I made myself ready for your anger. Now I don’t know what to do.”
“There is nothing you need to do,” Madame Wu said calmly. “I will have a maid lead you to your rooms. They are small, you know, only two, and they are to the left of my lord’s court. His Second Lady lives to the right. You need not meet. I will myself go now and tell my lord you are coming.”
She hesitated, and then said with a delicate frankness, “You will find him very just. If he leaves his silver pipe upon your table it is his message. If he goes away with it in his hand, do not be angry. That is my own request in return for shelter. Bring no anger into our house.”
She looked at the stolid old woman who had sat beside Jasmine all this time without a word. “And this one, is she your mother?”
The woman opened her mouth to speak, but Jasmine spoke first. “She belongs to the house from where I come.”
“Let her go back to it, then,” Madame Wu said. She put her hand into her bosom and took out silver and put it on the table. It shone there so largely that the woman could only get up and bow again and again.
But all was interrupted by Jasmine, who fell on her knees before Madame Wu and knocked her head on the floor. “They told me you were just, but now I know you are kind!”
Madame Wu’s cheeks flushed upward from her neck. “Had you come another day I might have been only angry,” she said honestly. “But today is different from all days before it.”
She rose, not lifting the girl to her feet, and walked quickly out of the room.
“I am a wicked woman,” she told herself. “I do not care how many women come into these courts. My own heart is full.”
She paused, waiting for some answer to this. But there was no answer, unless the complete peace within her heart was answer. “Had I discovered you while you lived,” she said, “would there have been silence between us?”
Still he did not answer, and she smiled at his silence. Even as a spirit he was shy of love. The habits of his life held. The silence broke a moment later. As she stepped into the main court she saw three men standing there. They were decent-looking, well-dressed men, and they turned their backs as she came in and pretended not to see her, as though she were a young woman. It was a pleasant compliment, but she put it aside.
“I am Madame Wu,” she said. “Is there anything you want here?”
They turned sidewise at this, and the eldest man, in great courtesy, answered still without looking at her.
“It is Madame Wu whom we seek,” he said. “We are come to ask if the dead should not be somehow avenged. That Green Band is a danger to our whole town, but never before have they killed a man. It is true he was only a foreigner and a priest, but if they begin killing foreigners and priests today, they will be killing us tomorrow. Ought not the town to demand justice on behalf of the stranger? If so, will Madame Wu make the accusation?”
There was a stir of protest in her mind. She saw André’s eyes, fiercely refusing vengeance, and she spoke instantly. “Certainly he would want no vengeance done for him,” she said. “He talked often of forgiving those who do not know what they do. But who are these robbers?”
“The worthless young men of the town, the adventurers, the ones who want to rise not through honest work, but through making others afraid of them,” the elder replied indignantly.
“Are there many such men?” she asked with wonder.
The men laughed but without noise, in respect to her. “There are many in these days,” one said.
“And why should there be?” she asked.
“The times are bad.” One of the other men spoke. He was a small withered man whose face was wrinkled but whose hair was still black. She stood there in the strong sunlight in her rose-colored robe, and there was admiration in the man’s eyes. But she was far beyond seeing it. She was wholly safe from any man’s admiration.
“What makes the times bad?” she asked. She knew well enough the times, but she asked.
“Lady, you have lived behind these high walls,” the eldest man spoke again. “You cannot know in what a turmoil the world is. The turmoil begins in the wickedness of foreign countries, where war continually threatens. None of us can escape. This turmoil makes the young everywhere restless. They ask themselves why they should submit to ancient ways which must soon change. They have no new ways to offer, and so, rejecting the old and delaying the new, they live without law.”
She looked at the men. Doubtful though she might be of all else, of André’s mind she was sure.
“He will take no vengeance,” she said.
They bowed and went away. But she was troubled after they were gone. She walked on to find Mr. Wu, that she might see how his spirits were this day, and as she went she pondered what the men had said. Should she have sent her sons forth into these troubled times?
“Were I alone,” she thought, “I might be afraid.”
But she was not alone. With this comfort she remembered that she had said she would announce Jasmine’s coming to Mr. Wu, and she went at once.
She entered the moon gate and saw Mr. Wu poking into the earth of the peony terrace with the brass end of his long bamboo pipe. He wore a lined robe of dark-blue satin, and he had put on his velvet shoes padded with silk. He was thinner than he had been. In his youth he had been full fleshed, and in his middle age nothing less than fat. Now, without his being slender, the inner fat was beginning to melt away, and his smooth brown skin was loosening.
“Are you well, Father of my sons?” she asked courteously.
“Very well, Mother of my sons,” he replied, and went on prodding the earth.
“You will ruin your pipe,” she remarked.
“I am testing the roots of the peonies to see if they are firm,” he replied. “There has been so much rain that I fear their rotting.”
“These terraces are well drained,” she said. “I had the tiles laid, you remember, the year Tsemo was born. We raised the height of the walls so that I could see the orchids from my bed.”
“You remember everything,” he said. “Shall we sit outdoors or inside? Better perhaps inside? The winds are insidious. They curl about the ground and chill one’s feet.”