You-shi’s encounters with Xi-feng were always the occasion of good-humoured banter. Taking Bao-yu by the hand and chatting to Xi-feng, she conducted them both into the main reception room, where they all sat down and were served tea by Qin-shi.
‘Well,’ said Xi-feng, ‘what have you asked me here for? Something nice, I hope! If it’s a present, you’d better bring it now; I’m a busy woman!’
Before You-shi could think of a suitable retort, one of the women attendants replied for her:
‘You ought not to have come, Mrs Lian! Now that you’re here, we’ve got you in our power and you’ll have to do what we say for a change!’
At that moment Jia Rong came in and paid his respects to the visitors. Bao-yu asked what had happened to Cousin Zhen.
‘He’s gone into the country to see Father,’ said You-shi. Then she added, ‘It’s not much fan for you sitting here. Why don’t you go off and amuse yourself inside ?’
‘You’ve chosen a good day to come, Uncle Bao,’ said little Qin-shi. ‘Last time you were here you wanted to see my brother. Well, today he’s here. He’s sitting in the study at this very moment. Why don’t you go in and see him?’
Bao-yu was for rushing off straight away. You-shi hurriedly ordered some servants to go after him in discreet attendance.
‘Well now, just a minute!’ said Xi-feng. ‘Why not ask him in here so that I can see him too ?’
‘Oh dear, I don’t think that would do at all!’ said You-shi. ‘Some people’s children aren’t used to rackety ways like ours. Some people’s children are quiet and refined. If they were to meet a termagant like you, they might die of laughing.’
‘He’ll be lucky if I don’t laugh at him,’ said Xi-feng cheerfully. ‘He’d better not try laughing at me!
‘He’s very, very shy, Auntie,’ said Jia Rong. ‘We are afraid that if you saw him it might only irritate you.’
‘Fiddlestick!’ said Xi-feng. ‘I don’t care if he’s a three-faced wonder with eight arms, I still want to see him. Stop farting about and bring him in, or I’ll box your ears!’
Jia Rong cringed in mock alarm.
‘Yes, Auntie! No need to get so fierce! We’ll bring him in straight away.’
They both laughed, and Jia Rong disappeared for a while and presently came back leading a youth who, though somewhat thinner than Bao-yu, was more than his equal in freshness and liveliness of feature, in delicacy of complexion, handsomeness of figure, and grace of deportment, but whose painful bashfulness created a somewhat girlish impression. He approached Xi-feng and made his bow with a shy confusion which delighted her.
‘You’ve met your match!’ she said to Bao-yu with a laugh, nudging him playfully. Then, leaning forward and gripping the boy’s hand in her own, she drew him down beside her and proceeded in a very deliberate manner to ask him how old he was, what books he was reading, and various other matters -among them his name, which was Qin Zhong.
When the maids and womenfolk in attendance on Xi-feng realized that she was about to meet Qin Zhong and that they had come without the requisite material for a First Meeting present, they had sent some of their number back to consult Patience in the other house. Patience had, at her own discretion, selected a suitable length of material and two little ‘Top of the List’ solid gold medallions to give the messengers. These gifts now arrived for Xi-feng (who thought them somewhat on the meagre side) to give to Qin Zhong. When he and his sister had formally thanked her, the company sat down to lunch, after which You-shi, Xi-feng and Qin-shi settled down to a game of cards, while Bao-yu and Qin Zhong left the table to converse elsewhere.
When Bao-yu first set eyes on Qin Zhong it had been as though part of his soul had left him. For a while he stared blankly, oblivious to all around him, while a stream of idle fancies passed through his mind.
‘How perfect he is! Who would have believed there could be such perfection? Now that I have seen him I know that I am just a pig wallowing in the mud, a mangy dog! Why, why did I have to be born in this pretentious aristocratic household ? Why couldn’t I have been born in the family of some poor scholar or low-grade clerk ? Then I could have been near him and got to know him, and my life would have been worth living. Though I am so much richer and more nobly born than he, what use are my fine clothes but to cover up the dead and rotten wood beneath? What use the luxuries I eat and drink but to fill the cesspit and swell the stinking sewer of my inside? O rank and riches! How you poison everything!’
At the same time Qin Zhong, struck by Bao-yu’s rare good looks and princely bearing and – even more perhaps – by the golden coronet and embroidered clothing and the train of pretty maids and handsome pages who attended him, was thinking:
‘No wonder my sister raves about him whenever his name is mentioned! Why did I have to be born in a poor respectable family ? How I should have liked to get to know him: to have shared moments of warmth and affection with him! But it was not to be!’
Each, plunged in reverie, for a while said nothing. Then Bao-yu asked Qin Zhong about his reading, and Qin Zhong replied – a full, frank reply, without the trappings of politeness: and presently they were in the midst of a delightful conversation and were already like old friends.
After a while tea and various confections were brought in.
‘We two shan’t be drinking any wine,’ Bao-yu said to the ladies. ‘May we have a plate or two of these things set out on the little kang in the other room ? We can talk in there without disturbing you,’
The two boys moved into the inner room for their tea.
In between plying Xi-feng with wine and delicacies, Qin-shi slipped in for a word with Bao-yu.
‘My brother’s quite young, Uncle Bao. Please, for my sake, don’t mind him if he does anything to offend you! He may be shy, but he’s got quite a nasty temper. He’s not really easy to get on with at all.
‘You go along!’ said Bao-yu with a smile. ‘We shall be all right!’
After a few admonitory words to her brother, Qin-shi went back to look after Xi-feng.
Some minutes later Xi-feng and You-shi sent a servant in to inquire whether the boys would like anything else to eat, adding that they had only to ask if they wanted anything. Bao-yu promised that they would; but his mind was not on eating and drinking, and he continued to question Qin Zhong about his life at home.
‘My private tutor resigned last year,’ Qin Zhong told him. ‘Father is quite old, and as his health is not very good and his job keeps him terribly busy, he hasn’t been able to do anything yet about getting me another one. At the moment I am just going over old lessons on my own at home. The trouble is, though, that if you want to get on in a subject, you really need one or two like-minded people to study with you, so that every so often you can all discuss what you have been reading…’
‘Exactly!’ Bao-yu put in eagerly, not waiting for him to finish. ‘We have a private school in our family to which any members of the clan who can’t manage private tuition may send their children, and boys from related families who aren’t in the clan can also be admitted. I have been at a loose end ever since my tutor went home on leave, and Father would have liked me to go to this school for revision until he gets back next year and I can be taught privately again. But Grandmother said that with so many boys in the school I should be sure to get up to mischief, and it would do me more harm than good. She also said I couldn’t in any case go then, because I’d only just recovered after several days in bed. And so it got put off.
‘From what you say, your father is worried about the same problem as mine; so why not tell him about this school when you get back today and ask him if you can join? I should be there to keep you company, and we could both help each other. I think it would be a marvellous idea.’
‘The other day when the question of engaging a tutor came up, Father mentioned this school of yours as a possible alternative,’ said Qin Zhong. ‘He was going to come over and have a word with my sister’s father-in-law about it and get him to recom
mend me; but they were busy here at the time and it didn’t seem the right moment to bother them with a little thing like this. However, if you are really of the opinion that I could be of some service to you, even if it’s only grinding your ink or cleaning your ink-stone, do please arrange it as soon as you can, before we both get too rusty! We should be relieving our parents of an anxiety and having the pleasure of each other’s company at one and the same time; so it would be a good arrangement from every point of view.’
‘Don’t worry!’ said Bao-yu. ‘I’ll tell Cousin Lian’s wife presently, when we join the others. Then when we get back home tonight, you must tell your father and I shall tell my grandmother. There’s no reason that I can see why this shouldn’t be settled immediately.’
They had concluded their discussion in gathering dusk, and now moved back into the lamplit outer room and watched the ladies at their cards for a while. When the latter had finished and had added up their scores, it appeared that Qin-shi and You-shi had lost to Xi-feng and owed her a dramatic entertainment at which the players and the drinks were to be provided at their expense. In the course of dinner, which was now served and at which they were joined by the two boys, it was decided that this should take place in two days’ time.
As it was now quite dark, You-shi gave her women orders to see that two menservants were detailed to attend Qin Zhong on his way back home. The women were gone on their errand an unusually long time and eventually Qin Zhong rose to take his leave.
‘Who has been chosen to go with him?’ You-shi asked.
‘They have asked Big Jiao,’ said the women, ‘but it seems that he is terribly drunk and swearing at everybody.’
You-shi and Qin-shi were indignant.
‘Whatever did they want to go and ask him for ? Any of the younger ones would have done. What was the point of provoking him?’
‘I always said you were too soft with people,’ said Xi-feng. ‘You really mustn’t let servants get away with it like this. I never heard of such a thing!’
‘You don’t know Big Jiao,’ said You-shi. ‘Even Father couldn’t do anything with him, let alone Zhen. When he was young he went with Grandfather on three or four of his campaigns and once saved his life by pulling him from under a heap of corpses and carrying him to safety on his back. He went hungry himself and stole things for his master to eat; and once when he had managed to get half a cupful of water, he gave it to his master and drank horse’s urine himself. Because of these one or two acts of heroism he was always given special treatment during Grandfather’s lifetime; so naturally we don’t like to upset him now. But since he’s grown old he has let himself go completely. He drinks all the time, and when he’s drunk he starts abusing everybody – literally everybody. I’ve repeatedly told the steward not to give him jobs to do – to behave exactly as though he were dead and ignore him completely. Why on earth should he have chosen him today?’
‘I know this Big Jiao all right,’ said Xi-feng, ‘and I still say that you are too weak. You ought to send him away. Right away. Send him to live on one of your farms: that would put a stop to his nonsense I’ She turned to the women and asked if her own carriage was ready yet. The women replied that it was waiting, and she rose to take her leave and, taking Bao-yu by the hand, went out on to the steps, attended by You-shi and the rest.
In the flickering light of many lanterns the pages stood stiffly to attention on the pavement below, while Big Jiao, encouraged by Cousin Zhen’s absence to indulge his talent for drunken abuse, was getting to work on the Chief Steward, Lai Sheng, accusing him of being unfair, of always dropping on the weakest, and so on and so forth.
‘If there’s a cushy job going you give it to someone else, but when it’s a question of seeing someone home in pitch bloody darkness, you pick on me. Mean, rotten bugger! Call yourself a steward ? Some steward! Don’t you know who Old Jiao is? I can lift my foot up higher than your head I Twenty years ago I didn’t give a damn for anybody, never mind a pack of little misbegotten abortions like you!’
He was just getting into his stride when Jia Rong came out to see Xi-feng off in her carriage. The servants shouted to Big Jiao to stop, but without success. Impatient of the old man’s insolence, Jia Rong cursed him angrily.
‘Tie him up,’ he said to the servants. ‘We shall see if he is still so eager for death tomorrow morning, when he has sobered up a bit.’
But Big Jiao was not to be intimidated by such as Jia Rong. On the contrary, he staggered up to him and bellowed even louder.
‘Oh ho! Little Rong, is it? Don’t you come the Big Master stuff with me, sonny boy! Never mind a little bit of a kid like you, even your daddy and your granddaddy don’t dare to try any funny stuff with Old Jiao. If it wasn’t for Old Jiao, where would you lot all be today, with your rank and your fancy titles and your money and all the other things you enjoy? It was your great-granddad, whose life I saved when he was given up for dead, that won all this for you, by the sweat of his brow. And what reward do I get for saving him ? Nothing. Instead you come to me and you put on your Big Master act. Well, I’ll tell you something. You’d better watch out. Because if you don’t, you’re going to get a shiny white knife inside you, and it’s going to come out red!’
‘You’d better hurry up and send this unspeakable creature about his business,’ said Xi-feng to Jia Rong from her carriage. ‘It’s positively dangerous to keep a man like this on the premises. If any of our acquaintance get to know that a family like ours can’t keep even a semblance of discipline about the place, we shall become a laughing-stock.’
Jia Rong assented meekly.
Several of the servants, seeing that Big Jiao had got quite out of hand and that something had to be done at all costs, rushed up and overpowered him, and throwing him face downward on the ground, frog-marched him off to the stables. By now even Cousin Zhen was being included in his maledictions, which became wilder and noisier as he shouted to his captors that he wanted to go to the ancestral temple and weep before the tablet of his old Master.
‘Who would ever have believed the Old Master could spawn this filthy lot of animals ?’ he bawled. ‘Up to their dirty little tricks every day. I know. Father-in-law pokes in the ashes. Auntie has it off with nevvy. Do you think I don’t know what you’re all up to? Oh, we “hide our broken arm in our sleeve”; but you don’t fool me.’
Terrified out of their wits at hearing a fellow-servant utter such enormities, the grooms and pages tied him up and stuffed his mouth with mud and horse-dung.
Big Jiao’s last words had been clearly audible to Xi-feng and Jia Rong, though they were a considerable distance away, but they both pretended not to have heard. Bao-yu, sitting in the carriage with Xi-feng, was less inhibited.
‘Feng, what did he mean when he said “Father-in-law pokes in the ashes ” ?’
‘Hold your tongue!’ Xi-feng snapped back at him, livid. ‘It’s bad enough for a person in your position to even listen to such drunken filth, but to go asking questions about it, really 1 Just wait till I tell your mother! You’re going to get the biggest hiding you’ve ever had in your life!’
Terrified by her vehemence, Bao-yu implored forgiveness.
‘Please, Feng, don’t tell her! I promise never to say those words again.’
Xi-feng’s manner at once became soothing and indulgent.
‘That’s my good little cuzzy! When we get back I must tell Grandma to make them explain to the school about Qin Zhong and arrange for him to be admitted soon.’
As they talked, the carriage bore them back into Rong-guo House. But what happened there will be told in the chapter which follows.
Chapter 8
Jia Bao-yu is allowed to see the strangely
corresponding golden locket
And Xue Bao-chai has a predestined encounter
with the Magic Jade
When Bao-yu and Xi-feng were back and had seen the others, Bao-yu told Grandmother Jia of his wish to have Qin Zhong admitted to the clan school. He poin
ted out that a congenial study-companion would stimulate him to greater effort and gave her a glowing account of Qin Zhong’s amiable qualities. Xi-feng was at hand to lend her support. She told Grandmother Jia that Qin Zhong would be calling on her within a day or two to pay his respects. Their infectious enthusiasm put the old lady in a high good humour, which Xi-feng took advantage of to ask if she would accompany her to the dramatic entertainment which her opponents had promised in two days’ time.
In spite of her years Grandmother Jia loved any kind of excitement and when, two days later, You-shi came to fetch Xi-feng, the old lady did in fact accompany them, taking Lady Wang, Dai-yu and Bao-yu as well. By about noon, however, she was ready to go back and rest, and Lady Wang, who disliked noise and excitement, took the opportunity to leave with her. This left Xi-feng as principal guest, and she moved into the place of honour and stayed there for the rest of the day, enjoying herself immensely and not returning until late in the evening.
After accompanying Grandmother Jia back to her apartment and seeing her safely settled down for her nap, Bao-yu would have liked to go back and watch some more plays but was afraid that his presence would be an inconvenience to Qin-shi and his other ‘juniors’. Remembering that Bao-chai had been at home unwell during the past few days and that he had still not been to see her, he thought he would go there instead and pay her a call, but fearing that if he went the quickest way through the corner gate behind the main hall he might meet with some entanglement on the way or, worse, run into his father, he decided to go by a more circuitous route.
The maids and nurses who attended him had been expecting him to change into his everyday clothes, but seeing him go out of the inner gate again without doing so, followed after him, assuming that he was going back to the other mansion to watch the plays. To their surprise, however, he turned left when he reached the covered passage-way instead of going straight on, and made off in a north-easterly direction.