Pavilion of Women: A Novel of Life in the Women's Quarters Read Free Page B

end of a half an hour, then you may rise and say farewell.”
    Madame Kang yielded, as she always did, being unable to refuse anything to one she loved. She sat down again in great good nature, and Ying went away and came back bringing with her a foreigner, a woman.
    “Little Sister Hsia!” she announced.
    “Oh, Madame Wu—oh, Madame Kang!” Little Sister Hsia cried. She was a tall, thin, pale woman, now nearly middle-aged, whose birthplace was England. The scanty hair on her head was the color of sand, and she had fish eyes. Her nose was thin and high, and her lips were blue. In her Western dress of striped gray cotton she looked older than she was, but even at her best she could never have been pretty. Long ago the two Chinese ladies had come to this conclusion. But they liked her for her goodness and pitied her for her lonely life in the city where there were so few of her kind. They did not, as some of their friends did, put her off with excuses when she came to see them. Indeed, in this both Madame Wu and Madame Kang were much too kind. But since Little Sister Hsia was a virgin, there could be no talk in her presence of concubines.
    “Please sit down, Little Sister,” Madame Wu said in her pretty voice. “Have you eaten your breakfast?”
    Little Sister Hsia laughed. She had never, in spite of many years of living in the city, learned to be wholly at ease with the ladies. She laughed incessantly while she talked. “Oh … I get up to box farmers,” she said. She studied Chinese faithfully every day, but since she had a dull ear she still spoke as a Westerner. Now she confused the sounds of two words. The two ladies looked at each other with a faint bewilderment, although they were accustomed to Little Sister’s confusions.
    “Box farmers?” Madame Kang repeated.
    “Resemble farmers,” Madame Wu murmured. “The two words are much alike, it is true.”
    “Oh, did I say that?” Little Sister cried, laughing. “Oh, please, I am too stupid!”
    But Madame Wu saw the red rush up from her neck and spot her pale skin, and she understood the tumult in this uneasy foreign heart.
    “Ying, bring some tea and some little cakes,” she said. “Bring some of the long-life cakes,” she added, and relented. “Why should I not tell my foreign friend that it is my birthday?”
    “Oh, your birthday!” Little Sister Hsia cried. “Oh, I didn’t know—”
    “Why should you know?” Madame Wu asked. “I am forty years old today.”
    Little Sister Hsia gazed at her with eyes that were wistful. “Forty?” she repeated. She fluttered her hands and laughed her meaningless shy laughter. “Why,” she stammered, “why, Madame Wu, you look twenty.”
    “How old are you, Little Sister?” Madame Kang asked politely.
    Madame Wu looked at her with gentle reproach. “Meichen, I have never told you, but it is not polite, according to the Western custom, to ask a woman’s age. My second son’s wife, who has lived in Shanghai and knows foreigners, told me so.”
    “Not polite?” Madame Kang repeated. Her round black eyes looked blank. “Why not?”
    “Oh, ha, ha!” Little Sister Hsia laughed. “It doesn’t matter—I have been here so long, I am so used—”
    Madame Kang looked at her with mild interest. “Then how old are you?” she asked again.
    Little Sister Hsia was suddenly solemn. “Oh—thirtyish,” she said in a low quick voice.
    Madame Kang did not understand her. “Thirty-six,” she repeated amiably.
    “No, no, not thirty-six, not so much,” Little Sister Hsia was laughing again, but there was protest in the laughter.
    Madame Wu heard this protest. “Come,” she said, “what does age matter? It is a good thing to live life year by year, enjoying each year.” She understood, by her gift of divining others, that the matter of age touched this Western woman because she was still a virgin. An old virgin! She had once seen this before in her own mother’s family. Her mother’s mother’s