Fuh Tang still lay in the stupor of drugged sleep, but as she leaned over him she saw in his blue-lined face something of the price that he had paid for her freedom thus far. For the first time she saw the real contrast between him and the handsome gallant man who had loved her enough to break down the walls of custom for her and sacrifice his own career to earn her bread by daily work. She saw him not as a destroyer of her trust, but as the victim of circumstances which had been too great for both of them until now. She saw thus now because she measured their love not by her need of him, but by his need of her. She read, too, in the repeated calls from his household for their return more than just the desire to enforce old traditions. She felt something of the weight of the household burdens upon the tired shoulders of Madame Chia, and the patience and understanding which it required to keep life going on smoothly and happily in a home. And she knew that according to custom it was her duty, as the wife of the eldest son of the family, to relieve Madame Chia and to be ready to take her place when she should be called to the world beyond.
She saw her path of service within her own small world first in ministering to those who had need of her and then perhaps out through them to others.
With an abiding peace in her heart Kuei Ping unfolded and put back in the familiar pigskin chests the garments she had prepared for her pilgrimage.
Wherein
there is
patience
and tenderness
and understanding
and a
return to
a little
home village
A PROCESSION of three sedan chairs made its way along the Big Horse Street of Kuei Ping’s home village. It was the time of the Feast of Lanterns. Made in shapes of birds, and fish with great eyes, and cocks, and little houses that spun round and round when they were lit, some large and some small, they decorated the shops and hung in front of entrance ways, or dangled from sedan chairs. Bo Te, riding with his father in the front of the procession, cried out in glee over each new display or shouted in pure ecstasy over the firing of a particularly loud bunch of firecrackers. The street was packed with slow-moving holiday makers and with vendors who cried their wares and made sales in the midst of traffic, so that Fuh Tang spoke to the chair-bearer in the lead asking him to go through the more quiet Street of Precious Pearls and connect with the hutung on the opposite side.
Kuei Ping rode second in the home-bound procession. Chang An, following behind, leaned forward and raised her voice to remind her of the day, which seemed so long ago now, on which they had come here to buy Kuei Ping’s dowry pearls. The street, too, had its decking in honor of the holiday, dainty lanterns of dull gold decorated in red hung before Wong Lui’s close-shuttered doorways, and lovely ones shaped like bright colored autumn leaves decorated a shop farther down the street.