We sat upon the little brick terrace he has had placed to the south of the house. Our son was asleep upstairs in his bamboo bed. The servants had withdrawn to their own affairs. I sat upon the porcelain garden seat a little apart from my lord, as was fitting. He lay in a long reed chair.
Together we watched the full-faced moon, swinging high in the heavens. The night wind had sprung up, and across the sky a procession of white clouds whirled with the speed of great snowy birds, now obscuring, now leaving magically clear, the face of the moon. So swift were the clouds that it was as if the moon itself were spinning above the trees. The smell of rain clung to the night air. Delight in this beauty and peace welled up within me. I was suddenly greatly content with my life. I raised my eyes, and I saw that my husband gazed at me. Exquisite and shy pleasure trembled in me.
“Such a moon!” he said at last, his voice moved with his own content. “Will you play the old harp, Kwei-lan?”
I teased him with mock reproach.
“The harp has six abhorrences and seven prohibitions, according to our ancients who made it,” I said. “It will not give forth its voice in the presence of mourning, in the presence of festive instruments, when the musician is unhappy, when his person is defiled, when incense has not been freshly lighted, or when in the presence of an unsympathetic listener. If it will not sing to-night, my lord, which of these abhorrences is present?”
He became grave then, saying,
“No, my heart; I know that once it would not give forth its voice because I was that abhorrence, an unsympathetic listener, But now? Let your fingers sing the old songs of love, the songs of the poets.”
Then did I rise and fetch my harp, and laying it upon the little stone table beside him, I stood and touched its strings while I meditated what to sing to him. At last I sang thus,
“Cool is the autumn wind,
Clear is the autumn moon.
The dead leaves fall and scatter again;
A raven, frost-smitten, starts from the tree.
Where are you, Beloved?
Shall I meet you once more?
Ah, my heart weeps to-night—
I am alone!”
Then did this sad refrain echo again and again from the strings, long after my fingers ceased to touch them. “—Alone — Alone — Alone—” The wind caught the echo, and suddenly the garden was full of the mournful sound. It vibrated in me strangely and called up my sadness which had rested forgotten for an hour. It was the sadness of my mother. I laid my hands softly upon the strings to cease their moaning. I said,
“It is I, my lord, who am the abhorrence to-night. I am grieved, I, the musician, and the harp moans on of its own accord.”
“Grieved?” He rose, and coming to me he took my hand.
“It is my mother,” I said faintly, daring to rest my head for an instant against his arm. “She grieves, and her grief speaks to me through the harp. It is my brother. I feel the restlessness in her this night. Everything is restless, waiting for his coming. She has no one now except him. It is long since there was anything between my father and her, and even I am of another family now — yours.”
My husband said nothing at first. He took from his pocket a foreign-tobacco and lit it. He spoke at last in a calm voice.
“You must be prepared,” he said. “It is better to face the truth. He will probably not obey your mother.”
I was alarmed.
“Oh, why do you think this?” I asked.
“Why do you think he will?” he questioned in return, puffing out lengths of tobacco smoke from his mouth.
I drew away from him.
“No, do not reply with questions. I do not know — I am not clever, and never at reasons! If I have a real reason it is that he has been taught to know obedience to parents as the foundation of the state, and a son’s duty—”
“Old foundations are breaking — have broken.” He interrupted me with a significant look. “There must be stronger reasons than that in these days!”
I was filled with doubt as he spoke. Then I remembered a secret comfort of my own — a thing I had not spoken aloud. This was my inner thought.
“But foreign women are so ugly,” I whispered. “How shall a man of our race marry among them? Their own men have no recourse, but—”
I fell silent, for I was ashamed to speak of men thus before my husband. Yet how could a man desire such women as that one we had seen before my son’s birth? Such light flat eyes and faded hair, such coarse hands and feet? I knew my brother! Was he not the son of my father, and had not my father ever loved above all things in the world beauty in women?
But my husband laughed shortly.
“Ha! Not all Chinese women are beautiful, and not all foreign women are ugly! The daughter of Li, to whom your brother is betrothed, is not a beauty, I hear. They say in the tea-shops that her lips are too wide — that they are curved downward like a rice-sickle—”
“What have the idlers of the tea-shops to do, speaking of such a thing?” I cried in indignation. “She is a respectable maiden, and her family is noble!”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“I only mention what I hear and what your brother must have heard,” he replied. “It may be that such talk has made it more easy to fix his wandering heart upon another woman.”
We were silent an instant.
“And these foreign women!” he continued, smoking and musing. “Some of them are like the White Star for beauty! Clear eyes — free bodies—”
I turned, and I opened my eyes wide at my husband. But he did not see me. He went on,
“Those beautiful, bare arms of theirs — they have none of the artificial modesties and the reserves of our women, I can tell you. They are free as the sun and the wind are free; with laughter and dancing they pluck out a man’s heart and let it run through their fingers like sunlight, to waste upon the ground.”
My breath ceased for a moment. Of whom did he speak then, my husband? What foreigner had taught him thus? I felt a sudden bitter anger rising in me.
“You — you have—” I faltered.
But he shook his head, laughing a little at me.
“What a woman you are! No — none ever wasted my heart thus. I kept it somehow until—” His tone dropped into tenderness, and my heart recognized it, and I was eased.
“But it was hard?” I whispered.
“Well, yes, sometimes. We Chinese men have been kept so separate. Our women are reserved, demure. They reveal nothing. And to a young man — and your brother is young — these others, these foreign women, with their beautiful, swan-white flesh, their exquisite bodies offering themselves in the dance—”
“Hush, my lord,” I said with dignity. “This is men’s talk. I will not hear it. Are these people really as uncultivated and savage as this sounds on your lips?”
“No,” he replied slowly. “It is partly because their nation is young, and youth takes its pleasures in crude form. But I speak of this because your brother is young, too. And even if you do not like to hear it, yet it is not to be forgotten that the lips of his betrothed are wide and curved like a rice-sickle.” He smiled again, and seating himself he fell to staring at the moon.
My husband is wise. I cannot lightly cast aside his words. From what he has said I begin to perceive that there is some transient charm about the uncovered flesh of these foreign women. Hearing him speak, I am disturbed by it. It makes me remember the glittering eyes and the laughter of my father and his favorite concubine. I shudder, and yet I cannot draw my thoughts away.
I pondered, therefore. It is true that my brother is a man. Moreover, his continued silence is an evil sign. It has ever been his way from childhood to let silence deepen with determination. As a babe if our mother forbade him something, Wang Da Ma said he would grow suddenly silent and seize the thing yet more firmly.