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

now they would themselves give birth to other children. Mother and grandmother, she had been absorbed in giving birth. Now it was over.
    At this moment she heard a footstep. It was clear and decided, clacking on the stones lightly as it approached. She wondered for a moment—leather shoes? Who wore leather shoes among the women? For it was a woman’s footsteps. Then she knew. It was Rulan, the Shanghai wife of Tsemo, her second son. She sighed, reluctant to yield even for a moment her silence and loneliness. But she rebuked herself. No one must think she had withdrawn from the house. Rather, let them think of this as the center of the house because she was here.
    “Come hither, Rulan,” she called. Her pretty voice was cheerful. When she looked up she saw the girl’s dark eyes searching her face. The young woman stood in the doorway, tall and slender. Her straight long robe was pinched in at the waist after the half-foreign fashion of Shanghai. Her bosom was flat. She was not beautiful because of her high cheekbones. Madame Wu’s own face had the egg-shaped smoothness of classical beauty. Rulan’s face was wide at the eyes, narrow at the chin. Her mouth was square and sullen.
    Madame Wu ignored the sullenness. “Come in and sit down, child,” she said. “I have just finished our family accounts. We are fortunate—the land has been kind.”
    The girl was plain, and yet she had flashes of beauty, Madame Wu thought, watching her as she sat down squarely upon a chair. She had none of the polish and courtesy which all the other young women in the house had. Instead it seemed that this girl even took pleasure in being rude and always abrupt. Madame Wu looked at her with interest. It was the first time she had ever been alone with Rulan.
    “You must be careful of your beautiful mouth, my child,” she now said in that gentle dispassionate manner which all young persons found disconcerting, since it was neither chiding nor advising.
    “What do you mean?” Rulan stammered. Her lips quivered when they parted.
    “It is a lovely trembling mouth now,” Madame Wu said. “But women’s mouths change as they grow older. Yours will become more lovely as it grows firm, or it will become coarse and stubborn.”
    Her cool voice conveyed no interest, merely the statement of what was to be expected. Rulan might have declared, had there been any interest, that she did not care what her mouth became. But confused by the coolness, she merely pressed her red lips together for a moment and drew her black brows together.
    “Did you come to speak to me about something?” Madame Wu inquired. She had changed her seat to one more comfortable than the straight wooden chair by the table. This one was wooden, too, but the back was rounded. Yet she did not lean against it. She continued to sit upright while she filled her little pipe. She lit it and took her two customary dainty puffs.
    “Our Mother!” Rulan began impetuously. She was pent and disturbed, yet she did not know how to begin.
    “Yes, child?” Madame Wu said mildly.
    “Mother,” Rulan began again, “you have upset everybody.”
    “Have I?” Madame Wu asked. Her voice was full of music and wonder.
    “Yes, you have,” Rulan repeated. “Tsemo said I wasn’t to come and talk with you. He said that it was Liangmo’s duty as the oldest son. But Liangmo won’t. He said it would be no use. And Meng does nothing but cry. But I don’t cry. I said someone must come and talk with you.”
    “And no one came except you.” Madame Wu smiled slightly.
    Rulan did not smile in reply. Her too-serious young face was agonized between shyness and determination. “Mother,” she began yet again, “I have always felt you did not like me, and so I ought to be the last one to come to you.”
    “Child, you are wrong,” Madame Wu said. “There is no one in the world whom I dislike, not even that poor foreign soul, Little Sister Hsia.”
    Rulan flinched. “You really do not like me,”