My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard | Page 9

but at the time of Li-ti's dressing
all the small goods she had gathered during the day were emptied into
the lap of Li-ti, who is too young to know that "as poison that reaches
the blood spreads through the body, so does the love of gossip spread
through the soul of woman." I do not know how it came about, but
comparisons were made between the households, that of her home and
that of her husband, and news was carried back to the servants' quarters
until at last our household was in a state of unrest that stopped all work
and made living quite impossible.
It seems small, but it is the retailing of little calumnies that disturbs the
harmony of kinsmen and ruins the peace of families. Finally I found it
necessary to talk to Li-ti's nurse, and I told her many things it were
good for her to know. I warned her that if she did not wish to revisit her
home province she must still her tongue. Things were better for a time,
but they commenced again, and I called her to my courtyard and said to

her, "The sheaves of rice have been beaten across the wood for the last
time. You must go." Li-ti was inconsolable, but I was firm. Such
quarrels are not becoming when we are so many beneath one rooftree.
The servant went away, but she claimed her servant's right of reviling
us within our gate. She lay beneath our outer archway for three long
hours and called down curses upon the Liu family. One could not get
away from the sound of the enumeration of the faults and vices of thy
illustrious ancestors even behind closed doors. I did not know, my
husband, that history claimed so many men of action by the name of
Liu. It pleased me to think thou mayest claim so long a lineage, as she
went back to the dynasty of Ming and brought forth from his grave
each poor man and woman and told us of-- not his virtues. I should
have been more indignant, perhaps, if I had not heard o'ermuch the
wonders of thy family tree. I was impressed by the amount of
knowledge acquired by the family of Li-ti. They must have searched
the chronicles which evidently recorded only the unworthy acts of thy
men-folk in the past. I hope that I will forget what I have heard, as
some time when I am trying to escape from thine ancestors the tongue
might become unruly.
At the end of three hours the woman was faint and very ill. I had one of
the servants take her down to the boat, and sent a man home with her,
bearing a letter saying she was sickening for home faces. She is old,
and I did not want her to end her days in disgrace and shame.
But thine Honourable Mother! Thine Honourable Mother! Art thou not
glad that thou art in a far-off country? She went from courtyard to
courtyard, and for a time I fully expected she would send to the Yamen
for the soldiers; then she realised the woman was within her right, and
so restrained her-self. It nearly caused her death, as thou knowest thine
Honourable Mother has not long practised the virtue of restraint,
especially of the tongue. She was finally overcome taken to her
chamber, and we brought her tea and heated wine, and tried in all our
ways to make her forget the great humiliation. As she became no better,
we sent for the man of medicine from the Eastern Gate, and he wished
to burn her shoulders with a heated cash to remove the heat within her.

To this she objected so strongly that he hastily gathered his utensils and
departed looking fearfully over his shoulder from time to time as he
passed quickly down the hillside.
Then I thought of her favourite priest from the monastery down below,
and sent for him. He came with candle and incense and, I think, some
rose wine for which the monastery is justly famous; and he chanted
prayers, striking from time to time a little gong, until peace was
restored and sleep came to her eyelids.
[Illustration: Mylady07.]
In the morning she wished to talk to Li-ti; but I feared for her, and I
said, "You cannot speak of the ocean to a well-frog, nor sing of ice to a
summer insect. She will not understand. She said Li-ti was without
brains, a senseless thing of paint and powder. I said, "We will form her,
we will make of her a wise woman in good time. She replied with
bitterness, "Rotten wood cannot be carved nor walls of dirt be
plastered." I could not answer, but I sent Li-ti to