The Last Garment

Feng walked home through the autumn light, leaning on a stick he had borrowed at the gate. The road seemed longer than he remembered. He was bruised, and he was ashamed, and he was, above all, hungry for the quiet face that had saved him.

Siniang was waiting at the cottage. She had lit the fire. A-Qing had already gone, she said; the road was long for the old maid, and she had sent her on ahead. There was no grief in her voice — only a certain quiet, as of a woman packing a suitcase whose destination she has known for years.

"You must leave me, then," Feng said. It was not a question.

"My term among you is done," she said. "I stayed because I had sworn to myself that I would learn what it is to love a mortal and be loved in return. I have learned it. The debt I owed to the kindness of your hearth is paid; the rules of my people call me home."

She pressed his hands. "But before I go, I have made one provision for you. The daughter of the Lin family, three doors down the lane, is a girl of steady temper and good sense. Her father is an honest farmer, neither rich nor poor. I have spoken with him. If you will consent, I will arrange the betrothal before I leave."

"She will not have to put up with your rash petitions," Siniang added, with a faint smile, "for I have told her father what sort of man you are. He will keep you in order better than I ever did."

Feng wept. He would have refused, but he saw in her face that this was no choice, only a farewell. He bowed his head and said what she asked.

That night, after he had fallen asleep from weariness, Siniang rose and dressed herself in the plain cloak she had worn the night she first knocked at his gate. She laid on the table beside his bed a single embroidered robe — the one garment she had brought with her from the hills, the one thing that had been hers in her own shape.

Then she was gone. The door was unbarred. The autumn moon lay pale on the threshold, and the cottage was, once more, a lonely place.

Feng married the Lin girl before the year was out. She was all that Siniang had promised: calm, frugal, and devoted. He drank less. He dismissed his loud companions and, by slow degrees, became the kind of man who keeps his accounts and does not sign rash petitions.

He kept the embroidered robe on a stand in his study, and showed it to no one. Years later, when his own sons were grown, he would tell them, in a low voice, the tale of the night the storm came, and of the fox-wife who had been clever enough to save a fool, and wise enough to leave him before her cleverness spoiled him. No one ever quite believed him, but no one ever quite disbelieved him either; and the robe, in its cedar chest, kept the faint smell of autumn hills.