HOW SHALL I TELL of my heavy heart, My Sister?
The day of my departure dawned gray and still. It was near the end of the tenth moon, when brown leaves are beginning to drift silently to earth, and the bamboos shiver in the chill of dawn and sunset. I walked about the courtyards, lingering in the places I had long loved best and impressing their beauty freshly and more sharply upon my memory. I stood beside the pool listening to the faint wind crackling the dead pods and leaves of the lotus plants. I sat an hour beneath the gnarled juniper tree which for three hundred years has stood in the rock garden in the third court. I plucked a branch of the heavenly bamboo trees in the court of the great gate, delighting in the vivid scarlet berries hanging against the dark green leaves. And then, that I might have something to keep of all the beauty of the courts, I chose eight pots of chrysanthemums to take back with me. They were at the moment of perfection, and I thought their red and gold and pale purple might mitigate a little the bareness of the house. Thus I returned to my husband.
He was not at home when I entered the little hall. The servant told me he had been called at sunrise by an urgent message, she did not know whither. I placed the chrysanthemums carefully about the little parlor, meditating how to dispose them to good advantage as a surprise for him. But when I had done my best I was disappointed. Richly as they had glowed in the old courtyard, against the black carvings of the passageways, here against whitewashed walls and yellow paint they faded to a mere artificial prettiness.
Ah, and so it was with me as well! I put on the jade satin trousers and coat and the black velvet sleeveless jacket. I dressed my hair with the jade and onyx ornaments, and I hung jade in my ears. I wore black shoes, made of velvet and cunningly wrought with tiny beads of gold. I had learned from La-may, the Fourth Lady in my mother’s house, the guile of colorless cheeks and a lower lip touched with vermilion, and the witchery of scented, rosy palms. I spared no pains for that first evening with my husband. I saw that I was beautiful.
When I was dressed, I sat waiting to hear his step on the threshold. If I could have pushed aside a scarlet satin curtain and appeared before him in the subtle light of an old Chinese room, I might have succeeded. But I had to come unsteadily down the creaking stairway and then join him in that parlor. There was nothing there to help me. I was like the chrysanthemums—merely pretty.
As for my husband, he came in late and looked very tired. By that time my own freshness had gone, and although he greeted me kindly enough, his eyes did not cling to me. He only asked that the servant should hasten with the evening meal, because he had been working all day with a sick person and had had no food since morning.
We ate in silence. I could scarcely swallow for the stupid tears, and he finished his rice hastily and then sat frowning over his tea, with an occasional sigh. At last he rose wearily and said,
“Let us go into the parlor.”
We seated ourselves and he asked perfunctorily about my parents. He paid so little heed to my answers that I faltered in my endeavor to interest him and finally fell silent. At first he scarcely noticed that I had ceased to speak. Then he roused himself and said more kindly,
“I beg that you will not mind me. I am truly glad that you have returned. But this whole day I have been fighting against superstition and sheer stupidity, and I have lost. I can think of nothing else but that I have lost. I keep asking myself—did I do all that could be done? Was there an argument that I did not bring forward to save that life? But I think—I am sure—that I did everything—and still I lost!
“Do you remember the Yu family next to the Drum Tower? Their Second Lady tried to commit suicide to-day by hanging herself! It seems she could no longer endure the viperish tongue of her mother-in-law. They called me in and, mind you, I could have saved her! She had only just let go the rope when they found her—only just! I prepared the remedies at once. Then in came the aged uncle who is a wine merchant. Old Mr. Yu, you remember, is dead, and the wine merchant is the head of the family now. He came in blustering and angry and at once demanded that the old methods should be used. He sent for the priests to beat the gongs to call the woman’s soul back, and her relatives gathered about and placed the poor unconscious girl—she is not twenty yet—into a kneeling position on the floor; then they deliberately filled her nose and mouth with cotton and cloth and bound clothing around her face!”
“But—but—” I said, “it is the custom—it is what is always done. You see, so much of the spirit is already escaped that they must keep the rest in by closing the orifices.”
He had begun to walk around the room in his agitation. Now he stopped before me, his lips pressed together. I could hear his quick breathing. He actually glared at me.
“What!” he shouted. “You, too?”
I shrank back.
“Did she die?” I whispered.
“Die? Would you die if I did this long enough?” and he seized my hands in one of his and placed his handkerchief roughly over my mouth and nose. I twisted free and tore it away. He gave a laugh as hard as a dog’s bark and sat down with his head in his hands, and we remained in silence as heavy as pain. He never saw the chrysanthemums I had arranged with such care about the room.
I sat watching him, bewildered and a little frightened. Could it be that he was right, after all?
That night I laid the jade ornaments sorrowfully in their silver case and put the satin garments away. I had been taught all wrong, I began to realize. My husband was not one of those men to whom a woman is as distinctly an appeal to the sense as a perfumed flower or a pipe of opium. The refinement of beauty in body was not enough. I must study to please him in other ways. I remembered my mother, with her face turned to the wall, and her weary voice, saying,
“The times have changed.”
Still I could not bring myself easily to the unbinding of my feet. It was really Mrs. Liu who helped me. She was the wife of a teacher in a new foreign school. I had heard my husband speak of Mr. Liu as his friend. She sent word the day after my return that if it pleased me she would call the following day.
I made great preparations for she was my first caller. I directed the servant to buy six kinds of cakes as well as watermelon seeds and sesame wafers and the best Before-the-Rains tea. I wore my apricot pink satin and placed pearls in my ears. Secretly I was very much ashamed of the house. I feared she would think it ugly and wonder at my taste. I hoped that my husband would not be at home so that I might at least place the chairs and table more formally and thus show distinctly which was the place of honor.
But for once he did not go out. He sat reading and glanced up with a smile as I entered the room a little nervously. I had planned to be seated when the guest came and as the servant ushered her in, to rise and bow her to the best seat. But with my husband there I had no chance to arrange the room, and when the bell rang, my husband himself went to the door. I was most chagrined and wrung my hands and wondered what to do. I heard a cheerful voice then, and I could not help peeping into the hall. I beheld a strange thing. My husband had taken the guest’s hand and was shaking it up and down in the most peculiar manner. I was amazed.
Then suddenly my astonishment and all thought of the guest dropped from me, for I looked at his face. O my husband, never had thy face worn that look for me, thy wife! It was as if at last he had found a friend.
O My Sister, had you been here you might have taught me what to do! But I was alone. I had no friends. I could only ponder and grieve within myself and wonder what I lacked to please him.
And the while she was there I examined my guest closely to see if she were beautiful. But she was not beautiful or even pretty. Her face was large and red and good-humored, and her eyes, though kindly and crinkling with smiles, were round and bright like glass beads. She wore a coat of plain gray cloth over a black unflowered silk skirt, and her feet were shod like men’s. Her voice was pleasant, however, and her speech came swiftly and readily, and her laughter was warm and quick. She talked a great deal with my husband, and I sat listening with drooping head. They spoke of things of which I had never heard. Foreign words flew back and forth between them. I understood nothing except the pleasure on my husband’s face.
That night I sat silent with my husband after the evening meal. My mind returned again and again to the look on his face during the visit. Never before had I seen on it an expression like that—so eager, so alight! He was full of words for her—he poured them out as he stood before her. He remained in the room throughout her visit as though she were a man.
I rose and went to his side.
“Yes?” he asked, looking up from his book.
“Tell me about the lady who called to-day,” I asked.
He leaned back in his chair and looked at me reflectively.
“What about her? She is a graduate of a big western college for women called Vassar. She is clever and interesting, as one likes a woman to be. Besides, she is rearing three magnificent boys—intelligent, clean, well cared for. It does my heart good to see them.”
Oh, I hate her—I hate her! Oh, what can I do? Is there only one way to his heart?—She was not pretty at all—
“Do you think her pretty?” I whispered.
“Well, yes, I do,” he answered stoutly. “She is healthy and sensible and walks on sound, steady feet.”
He stared into space. I thought desperately for a few minutes. There was only one way for women. How could I—and yet my mother’s words were, “You must please your husband.”
My husband sat staring thoughtfully across the room. I did not know what was in his mind. But I knew this; although I wore peach-colored satin and had pearls in my ears, although my hair was smooth and black and shining in cunningly arranged coils, although I stood at his shoulder so close that a slight motion of his body would have brought his hand to mine, yet he was not thinking of me.
Then I hung my head lower and gave myself into his hands. I renounced my past. I said,
“If you will tell me how, I will unbind my feet.”