The Warning Voice

  She began to grow more and more worried and eventually thought of a plan. Calling Brightie to her she told him to find out where Zhang Hua was and procure his death, either by laying a false accusation of robbery against him and leaving it to the magistrates and yamen runners to finish him off judicially, or else by employing an assassin. Only by such root-and-branch methods, she felt, could her fears be allayed and the threat to her reputation be removed.

  Brightie went off agreeing to do what she had asked, but when he got home and had time to think about it, he began to feel misgivings.

  ‘The fellow’s already gone away,’ he thought. ‘Surely that’s the end of the matter? Why does she need to make such a great issue of it? Taking a man’s life is no children’s game; it’s a serious business. I’ll just have to humour her for the time being and think of some way out of this later.’

  Having so resolved, he went into hiding for a few days before coming back and reporting to Xi-feng.

  ‘Three days after Zhang Hua and his father ran away, somewhere near Jing-kou in the early hours of the morning Zhang Hua was knocked down and killed by a highwayman for the sake of the money he was carrying. The old man died of a heart-attack shortly afterwards in a near-by inn. There was an inquest on the bodies and both of them were buried there, where it happened.’

  Xi-feng did not believe him.

  ‘I’ll probably be sending someone to make inquiries shortly,’ she said. ‘If I find out that you’ve been lying, I’ll have every tooth in your head broken.’

  But in the event she did nothing and let the matter drop.

  From that time onwards her demeanour towards Er-jie was affable in the extreme. No sister could have shown a greater interest in her well-being.

  *

  A day came when Jia Lian’s business was at last transacted and he was able to start on his much-delayed journey back home. On his arrival in the city he called in first at the new house in order to see Er-jie, but he found the place locked and empty with only an aged caretaker in occupation. When, in answer to his questions, the old man told him what had happened, he stamped in his stirrups with vexation; but there was no time for indulging his feelings, for he had shortly to present himself before his parents and report to them on the successful conclusion of his mission.

  Jia She was for once very pleased with him and praised him for his capability. He gave him a hundred taels as a reward and a seventeen-year-old girl from his own room called Autumn as a concubine. Jia Lian kotowed to receive his presents. He felt enormously pleased with himself; but there was a slightly hang-dog expression on his face when, after he had seen Grandmother Jia and the rest, he appeared once more before his wife.

  To his surprise there were none of the expected recriminations. Xi-feng seemed, indeed, to have become a different person. She came out to meet him with Er-jie at her side, confined herself to questions about his health, his stay in Ping-an and the journey back home, and made not a single reference to his deception. When the time came for him to tell her about Autumn, he was unable to prevent a certain pleased smugness from stealing over his face. At once Xi-feng ordered two of the married servants to go round in a carriage to collect her. Here was another thorn in her bosom, even before the first one had been extracted! Yet not a trace of what she felt was allowed to show itself in her expression. With the same unchanging smile she ordered a ‘welcome home’ dinner for her husband and took Autumn to make her kotows to Grandmother Jia and Lady Wang. Jia Lian privately marvelled at the extraordinary change that had come over her.

  It need hardly be said that Xi-feng harboured feelings about Er-jie very different from the ones her outward show of friendliness might have suggested. Once or twice when they were alone together she confided to her (in a sisterly manner, of course) that her reputation in the family was a very unsavoury one.

  ‘There is a nasty little story going around, my dear, that you weren’t all you should have been before you were married. They say you were much too thick with Cousin Zhen. I’m afraid even Lady Jia and Lady Wang seem to have got hold of it. They are beginning to ask me why I picked someone whom no one else would have, and why I don’t put you away and choose somebody more suitable. Needless to say, when I first heard this story I was flabbergasted. I’ve tried to find out who started it, but I’ve had no success. Oh, these servants! Just as I thought I’d done something to feel proud of, I find that I’ve got a fish’s head like this on my plate to contend with!’

  Xi-feng’s sympathy for Er-jie was so great that, after telling her all this a couple of times, her indignation against these anonymous traducers. caused her to become quite ill; she refused all food and drink and began to spend the greater part of her time lying down in her room. The servants, with the sole exception of Patience, speculated freely about the cause of their mistress’s illness, and Er-jie, though seldom named, came in for frequent criticism.

  Because Autumn had been presented to Jia Lian by his father, she had a very high opinion of her own importance, showing scant respect for Patience or even for Xi-feng, let alone for a poor, unwanted creature like Er-jie, who was commonly known to have been a fallen woman before she married. When Xi-feng noticed this she was secretly pleased.

  Since Xi-feng’s pretended illness, she had ceased to eat with Er-jie, whose meals, on Xi-feng’s instructions, were now served to her in her own room. Invariably the food that was given her was inedible. Patience was so disgusted that she took to buying her things to eat with her own money, or, on the pretext of going for a walk with her in the Garden, taking her to the Garden kitchen where she could be given nourishing soups to eat under her supervision. Because it was Patience who did this, none of the other servants dared to inform against her. Unfortunately Autumn once came upon them there and, feeling no such compunction, went straight off to denounce her to Xi-feng.

  ‘Patience is going out of her way to give you a bad name, Mrs Lian. That Er woman wastes the good food you give her and goes into the Garden with Patience every day to sneak food from the kitchen.’

  Xi-feng abused Patience angrily.

  ‘Most people keep a cat to keep down the mice for them. My cat seems to eat the chickens!’

  Patience dared not answer back, and from then on kept away from Er-jie; but she secretly hated Autumn because of this.

  Bao-yu and the girls were privately concerned about Er-jie. Though none of them would venture to speak out openly on her behalf, they all of them felt sorry for her. Sometimes, when no one else was about, one or other of them would get into conversation with her. Invariably she would be crying and wiping her eyes all the time they were talking to her; but she never uttered a word of complaint against Xi-feng – indeed, since Xi-feng was careful never to reveal herself in her true colours, it is hard to see what she could have complained of.

  Jia Lian for his part failed to notice that anything was wrong. Since his return he had been completely taken in by Xi-feng’s show of magnanimity towards her rival; and in any case he was at present somewhat preoccupied. The sight of his father’s many maids and concubines had often in the past aroused libidinous feelings in him which he had perforce repressed; while on her side Autumn had often in the past, by flutterings of the eyelids and various other signals, expressed a marked interest in her master’s handsome son. It may be imagined what sort of blaze was kindled in the brushwood when two such eager bedfellows were brought together with full parental approval of their union. Day after day he spent in Autumn’s company –

  aye sporting with his new-won bride

  in the words of the poet. He seemed, indeed, scarcely able to prise himself away from her. Gradually, as Autumn became more and more the only centre of his concern, his former feelings towards Er-jie began to cool.

  Xi-feng detested Autumn but was glad to have her as a means of ridding herself of Er-jie. She would ‘kill with a borrowed knife’ – or rather she would watch the killing from a safe distance, like a traveller reclining on a mountainside who watches two tig
ers tearing each other to pieces in the valley below. And when Autumn had disposed of Er-jie, Xi-feng herself would take care of Autumn. Once she had settled on this strategy, she lost no opportunity, whenever she found herself alone with Autumn, of stirring her up against her rival.

  ‘You are so young and headstrong. You ought to be more careful,’ she told her. ‘She is his second wife, after all. He is very, very fond of her. Even I have to give way to her a bit. It’s suicide to go constantly provoking her in the way you do.’

  This had the desired effect of releasing a stream of abuse against Er-jie, uttered in a voice that could be heard from one end of the courtyard to the other.

  ‘You’re too soft with people, Mrs Lian. I wouldn’t behave so meekly if I was in your place. Where’s all your old authority gone to? You can be forgiving if you like, but if I’ve got a smut in my eye, I like to get it out. You just let me get at that bitch, I’ll give her a piece of my mind!’

  Xi-feng pretended to be too scared of Autumn to rebuke her; but Er-jie, listening in her room, spent the whole day crying and was too upset to eat. She did not dare to tell Jia Lian what the matter was when he called in to see her, and next morning, when Grandmother Jia noticed that her eyes were red and swollen with weeping and asked her what the matter was, she would not say.

  This was just the sort of opportunity that Autumn was waiting for. ‘She’s very good at putting on this dying duck act,’ she confided to Grandmother Jia and Lady Wang when Er-jie had gone. ‘We get this from her all the time. It’s because she hates sharing. She wishes that Mrs Lian and I were dead so that she could have Mr Lian all to herself.’

  ‘It’s possible to be too attractive,’ said Grandmother Jia. ‘They say that a jealous nature often goes with it. How contemptible to be like that, though – especially when Feng has gone out of her way to be nice to her! One can see that she has no breeding.’

  From that time onwards she appeared to have taken rather a dislike to Er-jie; and the servants, when they sensed that Grandmother Jia did not like her, were only too ready to press forwards and trample on her themselves. Now indeed life for the poor young woman became a burden, only occasionally alleviated when Patience, acting behind her mistress’s back and against her wishes, took up the cudgels on her behalf. How could so gentle a soul, one of those whom Nature, in the words of the poet,

  did out of snow and rose-petals compound,

  stand up to the barbarities to which she was now daily subjected? After suffering in silence for a month, she began to show the symptoms of an illness: there was a weakness and lassitude in her limbs which made moving them an effort; she could keep nothing down, either food or drink, and seemed to grow thinner and paler all the time; and she could not sleep at night. One night, when she was trying to get to sleep, San-jie appeared to her, carrying the sword that she had cut her throat with.

  ‘Sister,’ she said, ‘you always were a silly, weak-willed creature. I knew you would suffer for it in the end. Don’t trust the honied words of that jealous woman! Outwardly she seems kind and virtuous, but she is treacherous and cunning underneath. She hates you and will never rest until she has brought about your death. If I had been alive, I would never have allowed you to move inside here; or if I had, I would never have allowed her to treat you like this. But I was fated to kill myself and you were fated to suffer here alone. That is our punishment, because in our past lives our wantonness led other folk astray. Sister, you must do as I tell you. Take this sword, cut off that jealous woman’s head, and come with me to the tribunal of Disenchantment to await her judgement. You will die in any case, but if you do not do as I say, you will have died for nothing and no one will feel sorry for you.’

  ‘Sister,’ said Er-jie, weeping, ‘my whole life has been sinful. You yourself say that my present sufferings are a punishment. Why should I add the crime of murder to my other sins?’

  San-jie left her sorrowfully, and Er-jie, waking up with a start, realized that she had been dreaming.

  Next time Jia Lian came to see her she had a tearful disclosure to make.

  ‘This illness I am suffering from will not get better. It is half a year now since I came to you and already I am with child. It might be the son you want, though of course we cannot know that until it comes. If Heaven is merciful, I hope I may live long enough to bear it; but I fear I may die before, and the child with me.’

  ‘You mustn’t worry,’ said Jia Lian, weeping himself. ‘I’ll get a first-rate doctor to cure this illness.’

  He lost no time in sending for one. Unfortunately the Dr Wang of the Imperial College who had attended Grandmother Jia and other members of the family in the past was at present with the Imperial Army in the field (he had some hopes of a baronetcy on his return) and the pages sent out to summon him ended up by calling in a colleague of his called Hu Jun-rong – that same doctor, in fact, who had been called in to attend Skybright a year or two previously. After taking Er-jie’s pulses he informed Jia Lian that her trouble was ‘irregularity of the menses caused by anaemia’.

  ‘But are you sure she isn’t pregnant?’ said Jia Lian. ‘It’s three months now since she had a period, and she is suffering all the time from morning-sickness.’

  When he heard that, Hu Jun-rong asked the old women in attendance if he might have Er-jie’s arm again. It was thrust out through the curtain and he spent a long time feeling the pulses in it a second time.

  ‘It’s true that in a case of pregnancy the pulse from the liver would be a strong one,’ he said finally. ‘On the other hand wood in the ascendant generates fire, which can by itself cause the drying up of the menstrual fluid: so a strong liver pulse may be indicative only of an irregularity in the menses and not of pregnancy. I wonder if I might have a look at the lady’s face? Before I finally decide on the right treatment, I should like to see what sort of colour she has.’

  The request was an unusual one, but Jia Lian felt he had no choice but to grant it. The bed-curtains were drawn back a few inches and Er-jie thrust her head out through the slit. The vision thus presented to him seemed to deprive the doctor temporarily of his senses, so that it is doubtful whether he was able to make any observations of diagnostic value while he was goggling at it. After a moment or two the curtains were drawn to again and Jia Lian accompanied the doctor outside and once more asked him for his opinion.

  ‘It isn’t pregnancy,’ said the doctor. ‘There is some clotted blood which is holding back the natural discharge. The important thing is to disperse the clot and get her menstruating again.’

  He wrote a prescription out and took his leave. Jia Lian sent someone to pay him and also to purchase the drugs named in his prescription. The medicine was made up, infused and taken. From about midnight Er-jie began to suffer from continuous abdominal pain, and after what seemed hours of agony, produced a foetus already sufficiently developed to be recognizable as a male child. This was followed by continuous bleeding in the course of which she fainted away.

  Jia Lian cursed Hu Jun-rong bitterly when they told him. He sent someone immediately to call another doctor. He also sent someone to look for Hu Jun-rong; but Hu Jun-rong, having got wind of what had happened, had already packed his bags and disappeared.

  The new doctor was not encouraging.

  ‘Obviously your lady’s constitution was not very robust to start with. It looks to me as if in the course of her pregnancy she must have been subjected to some sort of emotional distress resulting in a congestion of the pneuma. By mistakenly attacking this with a far too drastic dispersant, I am afraid the previous consultant has done a lot of damage. The vital essence has been eighty or ninety per cent impaired. As things look at present, I am afraid I really cannot guarantee a cure. I propose a treatment using both liquid and solid medicines simultaneously. If you can make quite sure that she neither sees nor hears anything likely to upset her during the treatment, there might be some hope of improvement.’

  Having given his diagnosis he departed, but not before wri
ting out two prescriptions, one for an infusion and one for some pills.

  Jia Lian was beside himself. He insisted that the culprit responsible for calling in Hu Jun-rong should be discovered, and had him beaten within an inch of his life. But Jia Lian’s distress was as nothing compared with the transports of grief displayed by Xi-feng.

  ‘It is beginning to look as if we are fated not to have a son,’ she lamented. ‘To think that a doctor’s incompetence should ruin everything, just as we were so near to having one!’

  She had a little ‘altar to Heaven and Earth’ set up on which she burned incense and in front of which she knelt down and prayed with the utmost fervency for Er-jie’s recovery.

  ‘Let me be ill instead of her,’ she prayed. ‘Only let You-shi’s sister get well again and bear us a man-child, and I vow to spend all my remaining days in prayer and fasting.’

  Jia Lian and all the others who saw her and heard her pray were filled with admiration.

  While Jia Lian and Autumn were alone together, Xi-feng had all sorts of soups and invalid slops made specially for Er-jie. She even sent the characters of Er-jie’s nativity to a fortune-teller to have her fortune told. The fortune-teller sent word back that Er-jie’s stars were temporarily in collision with those of some other female born under the sign of the Rabbit. A rapid investigation revealed that Autumn was the only person in the household born under that sign. It was her astral influence that was harming Er-jie.

  The sight of Jia Lian rushing agitatedly about, calling for doctors, ordering medicines, dispensing curses and floggings among the servants, and in general showing a most singular devotedness to Er-jie, had already caused Autumn’s system to secrete several gallons of vinegar. Her jealous fury when she was informed that Er-jie’s illness was due to her influence and when she was urged by Xi-feng to move elsewhere for a few days in Er-jie’s interest can be imagined.