Pavilion of Women: A Novel of Life in the Women's Quarters by Buck Pearl S

Author:Buck, Pearl S. [Buck, Pearl S.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781453267424
Publisher: Moyer Bell and its subsidiaries
Published: 2012-08-21T04:00:00+00:00

IX

IN LESS THAN A month after this, on a day when the first light snow fell, Fengmo went away. All the household stood at the gate to see him go. The street that went past the gate ended at the river, and the menfolk, and with them only Madame Wu, walked with him to the water’s edge. Hands helped him with his baggage and hands helped him over the side of the rocking rowboat that was to carry him to a small steam launch that would take him to a river steamer. The river steamer would take him to the ocean and the great ship that lay waiting. Above the whitened ground a soft gray sky brooded. The boat pushed off, and snowflakes melted on the boatman’s oars. A score of farewells followed Fengmo. Madame Wu did not call after him. She stood, a small straight figure wrapped in fur, and watched this son of hers cast off from the shores of his home. She was frightened and sad, but she comforted herself by these words, “He is free.”

And wrapping her coat about her, she returned to her own walls.

With Fengmo’s going Brother André would have ceased to come, but Madame Wu invited him to continue his lessons, taking Linyi as pupil instead of Fengmo.

“When my son returns from foreign countries,” she said to Brother André, in her cool graceful fashion, “I would like his wife to know something of what he knows.”

Now Fengmo’s marriage had been patched together in this fashion: One day Madame Wu went to the Kang house and talked with Linyi very gently in her mother’s presence. She told Linyi that Fengmo was going away, and she herself invited her to return in order that if possible before Fengmo went away, he might leave her with child.

“I do this, not only for the sake of our house,” Madame Wu said to Linyi, “but also for your own sake, lest you be unfulfilled.”

She had studied Linyi’s face as she spoke—a selfish pretty face, she thought. Good mothers always had selfish daughters. Meichen was too good. She made her children too happy. They thought of home as heaven and their mother as earth.

“It is not well for a young woman to be left empty when her husband goes away,” she continued.

To this Madame Kang had heartily agreed. Since her quarrel with her friend she had repented her anger. Linyi had aided her in this. For, while the girl had come home with all her mother’s pity, Madame Kang began after some days to see her Linyi as a willful young woman. She was no longer a girl, but a married wife. Yet she behaved as she had when she was a girl in a rich house. She rose late and dawdled about the courts and did not so much as pick up her handkerchief when it fell from her pocket, but she called for a maid to come and hand it to her. In small ways Madame Kang now began to reproach Linyi and to think that perhaps Fengmo had had something to complain about.

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