East Wind by Pearl S. Buck

Author:Pearl S. Buck
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance, Classics, Historical, General Fiction
ISBN: 9780416200102
Publisher: Moyer Bell
Published: 1930-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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.

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