‘Well,’ said the man with the theory, ‘it doesn’t seem very likely that a clever young chap like Mr Liu would suddenly go off to become the disciple of an old Taoist. We know how strong he is and how good at martial arts. Perhaps he’d found out that this Taoist was really a wicked magician and just pretended to become his disciple so that when he’d got him to some quiet, out-of-the-way place he could do him in.’
‘If that’s what it is, that’s very good,’ said Xue Pan. ‘There are too many of these fellows going around leading people astray with their silly nonsense. It needs a person like Xiang-lian to put a few of them down.’
‘But didn’t you look for Mr Liu yourself when you heard about this?’ his guests asked him.
‘Of course I did,’ said Xue Pan. ‘Inside and outside the city. And I don’t mind telling you – you can laugh at me if you like – I had a good old cry when I couldn’t find him.’
He sighed several times and looked very despondent. His customary cheerfulness seemed to have deserted him altogether since this loss. Seeing him so downcast, his employees did not venture to stay long, but drank the wine up, finished up the food, and dispersed. We, too, shall leave him at this point and continue our interrupted narrative of the previous day.
*
When Bao-chai got back from her mother’s to her own room in All-spice Court, she went over the toys that Xue Pan had given her, deciding which of her cousins each one of them should go to and retaining only a very few of them for herself. When she had finished doing that, she proceeded to portion out the other things as well. For some of the cousins there were writing-brushes, paper, inkstones and ink; for others, purses, fans and rosaries; some were to have hair-oil, powder and rouge; for some there were to be only toys. She made the little piles as equal as possible, except in the case of Dai-yu, for whom she selected twice as much as for anyone else. Having explained very carefully to Oriole who each of the piles was for, she sent her off, with an old woman acting as portress, to go round to all the apartments and deliver them.
With one exception, the cousins, on receiving their presents, tipped the bearers and said that they would thank Bao-chai in person when they next saw her. Dai-yu alone reacted some-what differently. The sight of the Hu-qiu toys, manufactured only a few miles from her native Soochow, brought on a severe attack of nostalgia. Once more she was reminded of her position: an orphan and an outsider, with no kind brother in her case to bring back things for her from the South. Already she was beginning to be upset. Nightingale knew at once what was the matter, but judged it more politic to remonstrate than to let her mistress know that she understood.
‘Look at all the illness you’ve had, miss. You hardly ever stop taking medicine. It’s only just recently that you’ve begun to look a bit better. Though even now I think it’s more a case of being in better spirits than being properly cured. You can see from the fact that Miss Bao has sent you all these things that she must think a lot of you. That ought to make you happy, not upset you. Whatever is Miss Bao going to think if she gets to hear that the things she has sent you have made you feel miserable? That’s not going to be very nice for her, is it? And there’s another thing. Look how concerned Her Old Ladyship and Her Ladyship always are about your health, how they get the best doctors and the best medicines to try and cure you. And now, just as you are beginning to be a little bit better, here you go, crying and making yourself miserable. It’s as if you wanted to get ill again, just to give them something more to worry about! It was too much fretting that brought on your illness in the first place. You ought to have a bit more consideration for yourself.’
While Nightingale was admonishing her mistress, a voice from the courtyard was heard announcing ‘Master Bao’. Nightingale called to him to come inside.
‘Sit down,’ said Dai-yu.
Bao-yu noticed that she had been crying.
‘Hullo, what’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘Who’s been upsetting you?’
Dai-yu forced a smile.
‘I’m not upset.’
Nightingale shot her lips out and gestured towards the table behind Dai-yu’s bed. His eyes followed her gesture to the pile of presents on the table. He realized she could only just have received them from Bao-chai.
‘Why, what a lot of things you’ve got there!’ he said. ‘Are you planning to set up a shop?’
Dai-yu made no reply.
‘Don’t talk about them!’ said Nightingale. ‘They’re from Miss Bao. As soon as Miss Lin set eyes on them, she burst into tears. I was just trying to talk some sense into her when you came in. Perhaps, now you’re here, you’ll be able to do it for me.’
Bao-yu knew what Dai-yu’s trouble was as well as Nightingale, but was no more willing than Nightingale to show her that he knew. He merely laughed, therefore, and answered Nightingale with a jest.
‘Oh, I know what’s upset your mistress. She’s cross because Miss Bao didn’t send her more. Never mind, coz,’ he said, turning to Dai-yu, ‘one of these days I’ll be visiting Kiangnan myself, and when I do, I promise to bring you back two whole boatloads of these things. That should dry your eyes for you!’
Dai-yu, aware that she was being ‘cheered up’, could not rebuff the clumsy attempt too impatiently; nor, on the other hand, did she feel inclined to let it pass unreproved.
‘I may be very stupid and ill-bred, but not quite to the extent of getting into a passion because I have not been given enough toys. I am not a three-year-old. You make me out to be even more petty-minded than I am. I have my own reasons for what I feel. What do you know about them?’
As she said this, the tears began once more to flow. Bao-yu moved over from his seat and sat down beside her on the bed. He began picking the articles on the table up one by one, turning them this way and that to examine them, and asking her all sorts of questions about them. What was this? What did you call it? Wasn’t this one clever? What was it made of? And this one, what was it for? He also made various suggestions as to where she should put them. This one he thought would be nice to keep by her on her desk; that one would look well with the vases and other ornaments on the walltable; and so on and so on until Dai-yu felt that, however well-intentioned this might be, she could stand no more.
‘Come on, you’re being a nuisance,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and see Bao-chai.’
This was precisely what Bao-yu had been hoping for. If he could get her to go out, the distraction of doing something else might cause her to forget her sadness.
‘Good!’ he said. ‘We ought to go, anyway, to thank her for the things.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of that,’ said Dai-yu. ‘Between cousins there is no need for such formality. I was thinking that, having just got back from the South, Cousin Pan must have told her a lot about the places there he visited, and hearing about them from Chai would be the next best thing to taking a trip back there myself.’
Her eyes began to redden, and for a moment it seemed in doubt if she would go out after all; but as Bao-yu was already on his feet waiting for her, she was more or less obliged to follow him.
‘After all the trouble Cousin Pan went to in getting them to you,’ Bao-yu told Bao-chai when they were in her room, ‘you ought to have kept those things for yourself, not given them all away to other people.’
‘There’s nothing very special about them,’ said Bao-chai. ‘They are all inexpensive objects made by local craftsmen which just happen to have come from a long way away. I thought the rest of you might find them amusing.’
‘When I was little, these things were so familiar to me that I thought nothing of them,’ said Dai-yu. ‘Now, after all these years, they have become novelties again.’
‘“The farther from home, the more precious the object” as the saying goes,’ said Bao-chai. ‘Not that these are precious, of course.’
Bao-yu feared that Bao-chai was moving onto dangerous ground and intervened to change the subject.
‘Be sure to make Pan go again next year, Chai, and bring
us back a lot more.’
Dai-yu stared.
‘If you want to make such a request, that’s your business, but kindly leave others out of it!’ She turned to Bao-chai. ‘He has not come here to thank you, you observe, but to put in an order for next year.’
Bao-chai and Bao-yu both laughed.
As the three of them chattered on, the conversation presently turned to the subject of Dai-yu’s illness.
‘When you are out of sorts,’ Bao-chai suggested, ‘you want to force yourself to go out of doors: walk around, visit people, look at things – anything to take your mind off yourself. You’ll find it is much better for you than sitting cooped up indoors feeling miserable. I wasn’t feeling very well recently. I felt exhausted all day long and hot all over and wanted to do nothing but lie down. This is a bad time of the year for me, and I was afraid of becoming seriously ill. So I started deliberately looking for things to do and forcing myself to do them; and do you know, during the last day or two I really have begun to feel better.’
‘I am sure you are right,’ said Dai-yu. ‘I have in fact come to the same conclusion myself.’
*
The person most gratified by Bao-chai’s presents was Aunt Zhao.
‘I’m not surprised they all say what a nice girl that Bao-chai is,’ she said to herself when the consignment of toys arrived for Jia Huan. ‘You can see from this how kind and generous she is. Her brother can’t have brought all that much back for her from his travels, yet every single person has been remembered. No one’s been left out because they aren’t important, even the unlucky ones like us that no one else ever bothers about. Now if it had been that Lin girl, it would have been a very different story. She can scarcely even bring herself to look you straight in the face. You wouldn’t catch her sending us things like this!’
As these thoughts passed through her mind, she was turning the things over and over in her hands and arranging them this way and that upon the kang. Presently the thought occurred to her that Bao-chai was close kin to Lady Wang. Why should she not take advantage of that fact to ingratiate herself with Lady Wang? Gathering the articles up in her arms, she went off, full of fuss and self-importance, to Lady Wang’s room and took up a position at her elbow.
‘Look!’ she said, putting on a very affected smile. ‘Look what Bao-chai has just sent our Huan! Such thoughtfulness in one so young! She’s a real little lady, Bao-chai. She has class. And so generous. You can’t help admiring her. I don’t wonder you and Her Old Ladyship are so fond of her and always speaking so highly of her. I didn’t like to keep these things without your permission, that’s why I’ve brought them. And I thought it might amuse you to look at them.’
Lady Wang had guessed what the motive for her visit must be long before she had finished. The clumsy attempt to ingratiate was by no means pleasing to her, but she could not ignore it altogether.
‘Certainly you should keep them,’ she said. ‘Let Huan have them to play with.’
She had merely glanced at the toys in saying this and then turned away again.
So Aunt Zhao, who had been so cock-a-hoop when she came, had got nothing for her pains but a smutty nose. Angry, but not daring to show it, she returned crestfallen to her room and threw the things into a corner, muttering crossly to her-self as she did so.
‘Hfn! What do you make of that then?’
And she sat on her own there on the kang, continuing to mutter to herself as she brooded angrily on her wrongs.
*
Oriole and the old woman had by this time finished delivering presents and went back to give their mistress an account of the messages of thanks sent back by the recipients and the various tips they had received. As soon as the old woman had gone out, Oriole moved closer to where Bao-chai was sitting and spoke softly into her ear.
‘When we were delivering at Mrs Lian’s just now, Mrs Lian looked absolutely furious about something. I had a word with Crimson on my way out and she said that when Mrs Lian came back from Her Old Ladyship’s a little before we arrived she was looking very grim – not at all her usual smiling self. She called for Patience as soon as she got back and they were talking earnestly together about something, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying. It looks as though something really serious must have happened. Did you hear about anything while you were at Her Old Ladyship’s today, miss?’
Bao-chai wondered what could have made Xi-feng so angry, but could think of nothing.
‘Every household has its own troubles,’ she told Oriole. ‘It isn’t our business to inquire. Go and pour me some tea.’
So Oriole went out to pour tea and nothing more on that subject was said.
*
After seeing Dai-yu to her gate, Bao-yu continued on his way to Green Delights. While he did so, he was thinking how hard it must be to be an orphan and feeling more and more sorry for her. He resolved to have a word with Aroma about it when he got back, but when he got back, only Musk and Ripple were in his room.
‘Where’s Aroma?’ he asked them.
‘Must be in one or other of the courtyards hereabouts,’ said Musk. ‘She can’t be lost. Why the sudden urge to see her?’
Bao-yu smiled.
‘I didn’t imagine she was lost. The reason I asked is because I’ve just got back from seeing Miss Lin. She seemed to be rather upset about something, and when I asked her what it was, she said the things that Miss Bao sent her were made quite near her old home and the sight of them had upset her. I was going to ask Aroma if she’d mind going over and having a word with her.’
‘Oh dear! Who’s in for it this time?’
It was Skybright who said this. She had come in at that moment and overheard only the last few words he had spoken. He repeated for her benefit the whole of what he had just been saying to Musk.
‘Aroma went out a few minutes ago,’ said Skybright. ‘I think she was going to call on Mrs Lian. It’s quite possible that she may drop in at Miss Lin’s place on her way back.’
Bao-yu made no reply. Ripple poured him a cup of tea. He took it from her absent-mindedly, rinsed his mouth with some of it, handed the rest to one of the junior maids, and stretched himself out on his bed, looking thoroughly miserable.
*
After Bao-yu went off to visit Dai-yu, Aroma had at first occupied herself with some sewing. While she was doing this, it suddenly occurred to her that it was some time since she had been to call on Xi-feng and ask about her illness. Now seemed as good a time as any to visit her, because she knew that Jia Lian was not there so that she would be able to converse with her more freely. When she had changed her clothes and, with the aid of a hand-mirror, made a few adjustments to her appearance, she went in again to tell Skybright of her decision.
‘I’m off to Mrs Lian’s now. Stay in the room while I’m gone, will you? We don’t want Master Bao calling out and finding nobody there.’
‘Aiyo!’ said Skybright sarcastically. ‘You are the only one who ever thinks about him, of course. The rest of us just sit around all day doing nothing.’
Aroma merely laughed and went off without replying. As she came within sight of the water near Drenched Blossoms Bridge, she saw that the lotuses were all dead and ragged-looking; but the hibiscus-bushes along the banks were just coming into flower, the pink budding clusters making a brilliant contrast with the bright green of the leaves. She lingered on her way along the embankment so that she could get a better view of them. Looking up suddenly from her contemplation of the hibiscus bushes, she became aware that on the other side of the path a little ahead of her someone was standing under the grape-vine waving a feather-duster about, apparently dusting something. When she got a little nearer, she could see that it was that indefatigable gardener, Mamma Zhu. Recognizing Aroma, the old woman beamed and came up to greet her.
‘It’s not often you find time to go out walking, miss?’
‘No, indeed,’ said Aroma. ‘I’m on my way to see Mrs Lian. What are you doing?’
‘I
’m trying to keep these wasps off the grapes,’ said the old woman. ‘There was very little rain in the dog-days this year, consequently it’s brought the pests out onto all the fruit. It gets riddled all over with bites and a lot of it is dropping before it’s ripe. These wasps are terrible things. You’d never credit it. They’ll go for just two or three grapes in a bunch, but the juice drips from them onto the rest, and then the whole bunch is spoiled. Look at that, miss! A whole lot more of them have settled just in the time we have been talking.’
‘Even if you keep at it non-stop with that duster of yours, you’re not going to keep off more than a few of them,’ said Aroma. ‘Why don’t you ask one of the buyers to get a lot of muslin bags made for you, to tie over the bunches? They will keep off the birds and wasps while still allowing the air to get at them.’
‘I certainly will,’ said the old woman. ‘What a clever idea! I’ve never heard of that one before – but then this is the first year I’ve had the job, you see.’ She smiled. ‘Look, miss, although so many of the grapes are spoiled, they still taste good. Let me pick you some to try.’
Aroma looked serious.
‘No, no. I don’t think they’re ripe enough to eat yet, in any case; but even if they were, I couldn’t possibly eat any before the first-fruits have been offered to the ancestors. Surely a person who has worked as many years for the family as you have must know that rule?’
‘Of course, miss. You are quite right,’ said the old woman hurriedly. ‘It was being so pleased that put it for the moment from my mind. I am a foolish old woman.’
‘It doesn’t really matter,’ said Aroma. ‘But you older servants ought not to set us younger ones a bad example.’
She continued on her way then, out of the Garden and round to Xi-feng’s place. As she entered the courtyard, she could hear the sound of Xi-feng’s raised voice coming from inside the house.
‘It’s monstrous! Treating me like a criminal, after all I’ve had to put up with in this place!’