It was Xi-feng’s turn to look angry.
‘How do you know it’s mine?’
Lady Wang sighed and shed a few more tears.
‘How can you ask me that? Who in this household apart from you and Lian could a thing like this belong to? The old women would have no use for a thing like this and none of the girls would know where to get one from. Obviously that wretched, worthless Lian must have got hold of it from somewhere; and you, treating it, I suppose, as a great joke, were only too happy to receive it from him. I know that young couples do go in for this sort of thing; why try to deny it? But the young people in the Garden are still innocent. Suppose one of their maids had picked it up and shown it to them? It doesn’t bear thinking of. Or suppose a maid had picked it up and told someone from outside that she had found it in the Garden? What sort of reputation would that leave our family with? It would be better to die than that such a thing should happen.’
A mixture of shame and exasperation caused the blood to rush into Xi-feng’s face. She fell on her knees beside the kang. There were tears in her own eyes when she answered, but they were tears of anger.
‘What you say is no doubt very reasonable, Aunt, and I have no wish to argue with you, but I really don’t own anything like this and I really must ask you to reconsider one or two of the things you have said. First of all, take another look at this bag. It wasn’t made here. One can see at a glance that it is a poor commercial imitation of “palace” embroidery. Even the tassels are the kind you would buy outside. I may be young and frivolous, but I’d hardly be likely to want a trashy thing like this. Secondly, this isn’t the sort of thing one would carry around with one. Even if it were mine, I should keep it hidden somewhere in a secret place, not walk around with it on my person, particularly if I were going into the Garden. The girls and I are always holding each other and pulling each other about, so that if I were wearing a thing like this, it would very quickly get noticed, and what should I feel like then, if one of the girls or one of the maids were to look at it? Thirdly, I may be the only young married woman with a husband in the family, but there are plenty of even younger married women among the servants who are often in and out of the Garden. How can you be so sure that it wasn’t one of them who dropped this bag? Then there are those younger concubines of Sir She’s, like Carmine and Azure. Mother often takes one or two of them with her when she goes into the Garden. They would be even more likely to own a thing like this. And Zhen’s wife herself isn’t all that old, not to mention Lovey and Dove, whom she frequently takes with her when she goes there. How do you know it doesn’t belong to one of them? And in any case, there are so many maids in the Garden, how can you be so sure that all of them are pure? There may be one or two of the older ones who are not so innocent. One of them could have slipped out on some pretext or other when no one was looking to flirt with the pages on the inner gate and got it from one of them. It’s perfectly possible. But I can assure you that I have never possessed a thing like this, and I know that Patience hasn’t either. So I really must ask you to reconsider.’
Lady Wang was somewhat overwhelmed by this torrent of words, but had to admit their reasonableness.
‘You can get up,’ she said with a sigh. ‘It was wrong of me to accuse you. I ought to have known that a young woman of your breeding would not be guilty of such unseemliness. I am afraid I was overwrought and allowed anger to get the better of me. But what am I to do? Your mother-in-law saw fit to send this thing round to me by a messenger. I was terribly upset when I unwrapped it and saw what it was.’
‘The first thing to do is to try not to be so upset,’ said Xi-feng. ‘If the servants become aware that something is wrong, the chances of Grandmother getting to hear about it will be much greater. If we can remain cool and carry out our investigations in secret, we are much more likely to get at the truth, and even if we don’t, no one outside is going to be any the wiser. We should pick four or five of our most trusted servants to do the investigating – people like Zhou Rui’s wife and Brightie’s wife who can be relied upon not to talk – and send them into the Garden as replacements of the women who have been dismissed. The pretext for their investigations can be that there are various things connected with the gambling that still remain to be cleared up. The other thing we must do something about is the number of the maids. There are far too many of them. As they get older, they begin to get grown-up ideas, and one can never be quite sure that they may not get up to some mischief. It’s no good waiting until something has actually happened before doing anything, because then it will already be too late; on the other hand to begin large-scale dismissals straight away would be very distressing for the girls and probably for us as well. It would be better to wait until each maid either reaches a certain age or shows signs of growing insubordinate, and then use the first slip she makes as grounds for dismissing her and marrying her to one of the boys. In that way we can both avoid having trouble and at the same time make a considerable reduction in our expenses.’
Lady Wang sighed.
‘You are of course right. But in fairness to our girls I think it must be said that they are already making do with the absolute minimum of service. Not one of them has more than two or three maids who are the least bit of use. The others are like a pack of mischievous children. And I am not the only one who would feel unhappy about cutting down the numbers; I think it highly probable that Grandmother, too, would object. After all, things may be a bit difficult at present, but we can’t be all that poor. I wouldn’t lay claim to any great riches, but I think I may perhaps be a little bit better off than the rest of you. So if there is any talk of economy, I’d rather do without myself than see the girls suffer. The important thing now is to call in Zhou Rui’s wife and one or two of our other women and get them to begin these secret investigations for us as quickly as possible.’
Xi-feng at once called Patience in and explained what was wanted. Patience went out again and within a short time had assembled five of Lady Wang’s and Xi-feng’s most trusted retainers: Zhou Rui’s wife, Wu Xing’s wife and Zheng Hua’s wife from among Lady Wang’s servants and Brightie’s wife and Happy’s wife from among Xi-feng’s. Lady Wang thought they might not be enough for the sort of detailed investigation she had in mind. While she was wondering who else to get, Wang Shan-bao’s wife walked in.
Wang Shan-bao’s wife, like Goody Fei, was one of the servants who had been with Lady Xing since her childhood and accompanied her when she came to the Jia household as a bride. It was she, in fact, who had brought the embroidered bag to Lady Wang, and she had trailed along to Xi-feng’s place out of curiosity, to see what she would do about the discovery. Lady Wang’s past observation of these trusted henchwomen of her sister-in-law had not been sufficient to make her mistrust them and she welcomed this new arrival as a reinforcement.
‘Ah, just the person!’ she said as she caught sight of her. ‘After you have reported back to your mistress, you will be able to go with these others into the Garden and keep an eye on them for me.’
On a number of past visits to the Garden Wang Shan-bao’s wife had been greatly put out by the failure of the maids there to show her the respect and consideration that she felt to be her due; but dearly as she would have liked to teach those young creatures a lesson, she had not so far found a sufficient pretext for doing so. This discovery of an obscene object in the Garden was, in her eyes, a godsend, and her recruitment by Lady Wang to play a part in the investigations arising out of it was the kind of opportunity she had dreamed of.
‘We’ll get to the bottom of this easy enough, don’t you worry, madam,’ she said. ‘What you need in that Garden is more discipline, if you don’t mind my saying so, and has been for some time. To see the way those young maids carry on there, you would think they were princesses. They can have that whole place in an uproar, yet none of us dares to breathe a word against them, for we know that if we did, they would go running off to their young mistresses and get them to complain th
at it’s them we have been criticizing: and that is a charge which none of us is willing to stand up to.’
Lady Wang nodded.
‘Yes, I suppose the girls who wait on the young mistresses are inclined to be a bit spoiled.’
‘The young mistresses’ maids are by no means the worst,’ said Wang Shan-bao’s wife. ‘The worst of the lot is that Skybright that works in Bao-yu’s room. Because she’s a bit better-looking than the others and a bit readier with her tongue, she goes around dolled up all the time like a Xi-shi, putting everyone else in their place. She likes the sound of her own voice, does that young woman, and she likes to have her own way. If you say the slightest little thing to offend her, up fly her eyebrows and she will begin telling you exactly what she thinks of you. Oh, she’s a proper little madam, that one! Not much of the maidservant about her!’
A sudden recollection seemed to strike Lady Wang while Wang Shan-bao’s wife was speaking. She turned to Xi-feng questioningly.
‘I remember last time I was in the Garden with Lady Jia seeing a maid, a snaky-waisted girl with narrow, sloping shoulders and something of your Cousin Lin about the eyes, shouting at one of the junior maids, and thinking what a thoroughly objectionable young woman she must be. I didn’t say anything at the time because I was with Lady Jia. I meant to try and find out who she was afterwards, but I forgot. I wonder if this is the same girl? It sounds uncommonly like her.’
‘Skybright is certainly the best-looking of the maids,’ said Xi-feng cautiously, ‘and as regards her behaviour and manner of speaking, I suppose you could say she is inclined to be a little too free. The person you describe certainly sounds as if it might have been her, but as I wasn’t myself there at the time, I wouldn’t like to say for sure that it was.’
‘There’s no need to go on wondering,’ said Wang Shanbao’s wife. ‘We can call her here this minute and Her Ladyship can see for herself whether it’s her or not.’
‘Whenever I see anyone from Bao-yu’s room, it’s always either Aroma or Musk,’ said Lady Wang. ‘Both of them are the kind of plain, simple girl I like. They would never send the kind of girl we are talking about to see me because they know that that is just the sort of creature I cannot abide. – Oh dear! One can’t help wondering, when a thing like this happens: suppose Bao-yu were to be corrupted by a little harpy like that…?’
After some moments’ reflection, she called in her own maid from outside.
‘I want you to go over to Master Bao’s place and say that there is something I want to ask them about. Say that I would rather Aroma and Musk stayed behind to look after Bao-yu. There is a girl there called Skybright who is very intelligent. You can tell her to come. Say she is to come over with you straight away. You are not to say anything to her on the way here.’
‘Yes, my lady,’ said the maid, and hurried off to Green Delights.
When she arrived Skybright, who had recently been feeling far from well, was just getting up from a nap and was only half awake: but as the order said ‘Come at once’, she had to go with the maid as she was, with no time to make herself presentable. However, this did not unduly concern her. Knowing Lady Wang’s aversion to people of her type, she would normally have felt some nervousness about having to appear before her. On this occasion she took comfort from the fact that her indisposition over the last few days had caused her to neglect her appearance. Dowdiness would count in her favour.
Alas! When she arrived in Xi-feng’s room, Lady Wang took one look at this languid vision with its tousled hair, crooked hairpins and rumpled dress and felt all the anger she had just conquered rising up again inside her – particularly when she recognized this as being almost certainly the same girl as the one who had aroused her ire on that previous occasion a month before in the Garden.
‘Good gracious me!’ she exclaimed sarcastically. ‘What swooning Xi-shi have we here? For whose benefit do you go around in this extraordinary get-up? Don’t imagine I don’t know what your little game is, young lady! I may not have done anything about you yet, but I’ll have the skin off you one of these days! – Is Bao-yu any better?’
Though shaken by the unexpectedness of this onslaught, Skybright realized at once that someone must have been saying things about her. And although understandably angry, she managed to keep her head. She was too intelligent not to realize that the question about Bao-yu was a trap. She knelt to answer it.
‘I don’t often go into Bao-yu’s room, madam, or see much of him, so I am afraid I am not able to tell you. It’s Aroma and Musk who mostly wait on him. They would be able to give Your Ladyship an answer.’
‘Little liar!’ said Lady Wang. ‘You’ve got eyes in your head, haven’t you? What’s the good of employing you if you can’t even tell me whether he’s well or not?’
‘I used to be Her Old Ladyship’s maid,’ said Skybright. ‘She selected me for night duty in the outer room at Green Delights because she thought that, going to live in the big, empty Garden he might get frightened at night. I told Her Old Ladyship that I was too stupid to work for Bao-yu, but that only made her angry. She said, “I’m not asking you to wait on him personally. You don’t need to be clever for the job I’m asking you to do.” So after that I had to go. I don’t see him very often. He might call me in once or twice every ten days or so to ask me about something and I just answer him and go back to my work. His meals and all the personal service are looked after either by the older servants and nannies or by Aroma and Musk and Ripple. Whenever I’ve got time for it, I still have a lot of Her Old Ladyship’s sewing to do. I’m afraid I don’t pay much attention to what Bao-yu is doing. I will do so in future, if Your Ladyship wishes me to.’
Lady Wang was completely taken in.
‘Please don’t trouble yourself,’ she said hastily. ‘Holy name! I’m only too happy to learn that you don’t see much of him. So you were given to him by Her Old Ladyship. I suppose in that case I shall have to see her first before I can dismiss you.’
She turned to Wang Shan-bao’s wife.
‘When you and the others go into the Garden, I want you to take particular care that this girl is kept well away from Bao-yu. Make sure that she doesn’t sleep in the same room. I shall be dealing with her in a few days’ time, when I have had a chance of speaking about her to Her Old Ladyship.’
As she turned again momentarily towards Skybright, her voice rose almost into a shout.
‘Get out of here! The sight of you standing there like a young trollop offends my eyes! Who gave you permission anyway to dress yourself up in that garish fashion?’
Skybright left the room, utterly crushed. She buried her face in her handkerchief as soon as she was outside the door and wept into it every step of the way back to Green Delights.
Meanwhile Lady Wang was telling Xi-feng how much she regretted her remissness in having allowed creatures like Skybright to inhabit the Garden for so long undisturbed.
‘I wish I had had the energy to keep a closer watch on things,’ she said. ‘I never expected to find a young flibbertigibbet like that in the Garden. And I suppose if there is one there like that, there are likely to be others like it as well.’
Xi-feng could see that Lady Wang was too incensed to reason with; and however much she might have said to the point, she would not in any case have dared to do so in front of Wang Shan-bao’s wife, who was one of her mother-in-law’s principal informants and a most notorious stirrer-up of trouble. She merely lowered her head, therefore, and murmured assent.
It was Wang Shan-bao’s wife who spoke.
‘Don’t upset yourself, my lady. Leave all these little things to me. There’s a very easy way of getting to the bottom of this business. Tonight, when the Garden gates have been shut and there is no chance of word getting through inside, we’ll make a surprise visit and search all the maids’ rooms in each of the apartments. Whoever owned this thing we’re trying to find out about must have other things like it as well, so if we find anything like it in our search, we shal
l have found the owner.’
‘That sounds like a good idea,’ said Lady Wang. ‘We shall never get anywhere unless we do something like that. – What do you think?’ she asked Xi-feng.
Xi-feng deemed it impolitic to disagree.
‘If you think it’s all right, Aunt, I should let her do it.’
‘I do think it’s all right,’ said Lady Wang emphatically. ‘Unless we do it this way, we might spend a year investigating and still get nowhere.’
A raid was accordingly planned for that very evening. After dinner, when Grandmother Jia had retired for the night and the cousins had all returned to their apartments, Wang Shan-bao’s wife, having first asked Xi-feng to accompany her, led her little party into the Garden. After ordering all the side gates to be closed, she set about searching immediately, beginning with the room just inside the Garden gate which was used by the women of the night watch as a rendez-vous. Nothing of interest was discovered there except for a few candle-ends and a little leftover lamp-oil which someone had evidently put by to take home. However, Wang Shan-bao’s wife solemnly pronounced them to be stolen property: no one was to touch these things, she said, until Lady Wang had been informed and the appropriate steps had been taken. They proceeded to Green Delights, barring the courtyard gates after them as soon as they were inside.
Bao-yu was still worrying about Skybright when this party of women came bursting into his courtyard and, without a word of explanation, walked straight into the part of the house occupied by the maids. On going out to investigate he ran into Xi-feng and asked her what was happening. Xi-feng went indoors to sit down with him and accepted a cup of tea.
‘Something important is missing that no one will own up to having taken,’ she said. ‘It’s thought that one of the maids in the Garden might have stolen it, so they are searching everyone in order to clear the innocent ones of suspicion.’