XIV
IN THE NEXT YEAR after this there came again an electric letter across the sea from her third son, Fengmo. Mr. Wu received it and he sent it to her by the hand of a servant, not coming to her himself. It was a strange letter. She read it in all possible ways and still she could not understand it. He announced his coming, and that was all. If winds and waves did not prevent progress, he would be home within the month at soonest and within two months at longest. But the allotted years had not passed, and he did not say why he came home early.
The more Madame Wu read the few words, the more unsettled she became. She wished very much now for the presence of André, for this one son she had shared with him. “If you could only look down, on him,” she murmured, “and then tell me why he comes home so suddenly, and whether he has done something wrong—”
But when she closed her eyes and looked for André’s face against darkness she saw him only grave. He was silent, and nothing came up out of memory to give him voice.
Neither did she wish to talk with Mr. Wu about this son, and neither did she wish to talk with Rulan, and last of all with Ch’iuming. Yet the more she considered the whole matter, the more she felt perplexed and uneasy, and at last she feared Fengmo’s return very much, lest it bring fresh trouble. It occurred to her now that of all persons she ought perhaps to speak with Madame Kang, who was the mother of Linyi.
The distance between these two had continued until now the path between their house would have grown in weeds had it been countryside. Even when Madame Wu had made up her mind to call upon Madame Kang she felt reluctance which she could not explain. She sat down with herself to discover what was still wrong. Why should she feel so far from her old friend, whose smallness she did not blame? The cause had its roots in their great difference from each other, and this difference she found upon reflection was that Madame Kang loved her husband exceedingly, even as she loved André, and these two loves, though as separate and unlike as Heaven and earth, were nevertheless of the same nature. That is, each of the two women knew what it meant to love another better than herself. But for Madame Wu the disgust for her friend lay in that Madame Kang loved her careless fat old man more than herself. To use love in this coarse way belittled high and splendid devotion. Yet in honesty she could not but discern the truth, that Madame Kang felt as she felt, and the difference was not in degree or in quality but in level. Madame Kang loved her old man as high as she could love, and was not ashamed.
“Yet old Kang ought not to live and breathe under the same Heaven with André,” Madame Wu thought with indignation.
She sat in the library, thinking these thoughts on a clear morning, and after she had thought awhile she laughed aloud softly at herself. Why should she be angry at love? It descended as the sunshine did and the rain, upon just and unjust alike, upon rich and poor, upon the ignorant and the learned, and did this make her angry?
The laughter welled up in her heart. She closed her eyes and saw André laughing with her, and she sat watching his face until she could see it no more. Then she opened her eyes, cleansed and strengthened, and Ying fetched her outer robe and made her ready, and sent a messenger ahead to announce the visit, and so she went to Madame Kang.
The house of Kang was unchanged in its disorder, and the staring children were more than ever in their number. Every son’s wife and concubine had added a child or two since Madame Wu had last entered these gates, and all were unmannerly and all as happy as ever. A cheerful bondmaid led her to the court where Madame Kang sat all day in a rattan easy chair, under a willow tree by a small pool. The easy chair had yielded itself to Madame Kang’s increasing flesh until now its woven sides had taken on the curves of her body. She sat down in the morning, and unless it rained she did not get up until night.
Around her children played and cried and drank from the breasts of their wet nurses, and the maids sewed and washed vegetables and rice in the pool, and her daughters-in-law gossiped, and neighbor women stopped by to tell the news and vendors came in to show their wares, and ladies came from other great houses to play mah jong all day. Here Madame Kang sat when Madame Wu was brought in and she shouted her welcome and her excuses for not rising to her feet.
“I put on such pounds that when night comes I swear I am heavier on my feet than I was in the morning,” she cried.
All in the court laughed at her, and a laugh from inside showed that Mr. Kang had heard her, too, but he did not come out. Being a man, he could only sit near by and listen and watch from his distance while he pretended to read or sleep.
Now Madame Wu saw that in the midst of all this company she could not say what she wished about Fengmo and Linyi. But without haste she sat down in her courteous fashion on a chair which some maid or other came and set near Madame Kang. Madame Kang knew very well that Madame Wu had come with a purpose, and so she waved her fat hands and shouted that all were to go away and leave them alone. So after much shouting and scampering and confusion, during which Madame Kang sat with her hands on her knees directing everybody loudly, the two ladies were alone.
Now Madame Wu took out Fengmo’s electric letter and showed it to her old friend. But Madame Kang laughed and waved it away. “The few characters I ever knew I have forgotten,” she said cheerfully. “I have never needed them, and why do I need them now with you here, Ailien?”
If there was any distance between them, Madame Kang’s manner ignored it, and she behaved as though she had seen her friend daily and yesterday too.
Madame Wu smiled. It was impossible not to smile at this woman, however she might feel disgust for her. So she read aloud Fengmo’s words, “I return home immediately.”
“Does he say nothing more than that?” Madame Kang asked, staring at the letter.
“Only so much,” Madame Wu replied. She folded the letter small again and put it in her bosom. She lifted the tea bowl on the table at her side, saw the cup was dirty, and put it down again.
“Clearly something has happened,” she said. “He planned to be away five years.”
“He is ill,” Madame Kang exclaimed.
“It may be,” Madame Wu said, “and yet in such case I feel he would have told us.”
“You think he has committed some sin?” Madame Kang exclaimed again.
“I cannot think that,” Madame Wu said. Indeed, after André’s long teaching she could not believe that there was grave fault in Fengmo. “It is about Linyi that I have come to see you,” she went on. “I blame myself that I have not continued her lessons since her tutor died.”
She turned her head away while she said these words, for she knew that Madame Kang was exceedingly quick to see behind words when it came to matters between men and women.
“Linyi does not mind that,” Madame Kang said heartily. “She dared not tell you, Ailien, but she hated those lessons, and she disliked the priest. She says he was always talking his religion.”