‘I’m entirely in agreement with you,’ said Jia Lian. ‘The trouble is that as Sir Zheng has only just got back, he doesn’t want to be bothered with anything yet. At the moment even quite important matters are having to be shelved. We’d never get him to discuss a small domestic matter like this. A couple of days ago an official marriage-broker came round here with all her credentials, wanting to arrange a match between her client’s son and one of our young ladies, but Lady Wang said that Sir Zheng was so happy to be home again with his family all around him – she says he’s hardly stopped talking about “family togetherness” since the day he got back – that she felt sure it would upset him to have to talk about the girls getting married and leaving home, and she forbade anyone to mention it to him.’
‘Why, I’m sure that’s as it should be,’ said Lin Zhi-xiao. ‘Her Ladyship is a very thoughtful lady.’
‘Talking of marriage-brokers, that reminds me,’ said Jia Lian. ‘Our Brightie’s boy wants to marry Sunset from Her Ladyship’s room and Brightie’s wife has been asking me if I would arrange it for them. It seems to me that it’s hardly important enough for that. Could one of you go round and see the girl’s father for me? You could tell him that it has my approval.’
Lin Zhi-xiao agreed to do so, but without much enthusiasm. After a longish pause he added,
‘I think if I was you, sir, I wouldn’t get myself involved. That boy of Brightie’s is only a lad, but already he’s drinking too much and gambling and getting up to all sorts of capers. I know they’re only slaves, but marriage is for a lifetime, after all. I haven’t seen Sunset myself for some years, but by all accounts she’s grown up into a very presentable young woman. It would seem a pity to throw her away on the likes of him.’
‘Oh, so Brightie’s boy has been misbehaving, has he?’ said Jia Lian. ‘It seems to me that it’s not a wife he needs but a thundering good hiding. I think you’d better give him one to get on with and then lock him up and ask his parents what they propose to do about him.’
Lin Zhi-xiao laughed.
‘We don’t have to do that now, surely? Next time he gives trouble, we’ll let you know and you can deal with him then. It doesn’t seem quite the time to tackle him about it now.’
Jia Lian made no reply and Lin Zhi-xiao shortly afterwards got up and left.
That evening Xi-feng summoned Sunset’s mother to her in order to propose the marriage with Brightie’s son. Sunset’s mother had all along been opposed to it, but it was so flattering to have Xi-feng talking to her like this, woman to woman, that she found herself agreeing to everything in spite of herself. When, some time after she had left, Jia Lian returned, Xi-feng asked whether he had spoken yet to the father.
‘No, I haven’t,’ said Jia Lian. ‘I was going to talk to him about it, but then I heard that that boy of Brightie’s is turning out a thoroughly bad lot, so I put it off. If what they told me about him is true, I think we ought to give him a good, sharp lesson or two before we set about getting a wife for him.’
‘None of us Wangs seem to find much favour with you people nowadays,’ said Xi-feng frostily. ‘I suppose since I don’t meet with your approval, it’s hardly surprising that you should be dissatisfied with my servants. I’ve already spoken to her mother about it and she was overjoyed. What am I supposed to do now? Call her in again and tell her it’s all off?’
‘No, no,’ said Jia Lian. ‘If you’ve already arranged it with her mother, it will have to stand. But you’ll have to have a word with Brightie tomorrow and tell him to do something about that boy.’
Our narrative moves at this point to the unfortunate object of these manoeuvrings.
*
When, some days previous to this, Lady Wang sent Sunset back home to her parents, it was on the express understanding that they might choose for her whatever son-in-law they wished. Brightie’s visits to her parents filled Sunset with fore-boding. Her union with Jia Huan had not yet been approved, but she had long since given her heart to him and knew that she could never be happy with Brightie’s son. When, shortly after that, she learned that Brightie’s son was a drunkard and a gambler and hideously ugly into the bargain, she became even more alarmed. The fear that Brightie and his wife might use their influence with Xi-feng to force her parents to accept the match finally made her so frantic that, on the evening of the day on which these other events took place, she told her younger sister, Moonrise, to go in secret to Aunt Zhao and try to find out exactly what was happening.
Now Aunt Zhao had always got on well with Sunset and had been longing for the day when Sunset could become Jia Huan’s concubine, thus providing her at the same time with an ally. It was an unexpected blow to her when Sunset was sent back home to her parents, and she was constantly urging Jia Huan to go and ask Lady Wang if he might have her for himself; but partly because Jia Huan was too bashful to open his mouth about it, and partly because he did not in any case care about her very much (after all, he thought, she was only a maid; there would be plenty even better than her in the future) he hung back, hoping that the matter would eventually be dropped. But Aunt Zhao did not give up so easily, and the night that Sunset sent her younger sister to see her she tried to enlist Jia Zheng’s support; Jia Zheng was unenthusiastic.
‘What’s the hurry?’ he said. ‘Wait until the boys have spent another year or two at their studies, it will be soon enough then. I’ve already got my eye on a couple of girls, one for Bao-yu and one for Huan, but I think they are too young yet. I am afraid that if they had the girls now, it would get in the way of their studies. You can speak to me about this again in a year or two’s time.’
Aunt Zhao would have gone on trying, but just at that moment there was a loud crash outside which made them both jump.
You will have to look at the next chapter, however, in order to find out what caused it.
CHAPTER 73
A half-witted servant-girl picks up a highly embarrassing object And an easy-going young mistress refuses to inquire into a theft
As we were saying at the end of the last chapter, Aunt Zhao and Jia Zheng were interrupted in the midst of their discussion by a sudden crash. The maids, when questioned, said that it had been caused by an outer casement of one of the windows falling. It could not have been properly fastened and must have slipped its catch. After first roundly cursing them, Aunt Zhao went outside with them to supervise its replacement. When she came in again, she helped Jia Zheng to settle down for the night. And so we leave them.
*
Meanwhile, over at Green Delights, Bao-yu had just gone to bed. The maids were themselves on the point of doing so when a sudden knocking was heard at the courtyard gate. The old woman who opened it recognized the caller as a maid of Aunt Zhao’s called Magpie, and asked her what she wanted; but instead of answering, the girl pushed past her and rushed straight inside. She found Bao-yu already lying down, but engaged in bantering conversation with Skybright and a couple of other maids who were sitting on the edge of his bed.
‘What’s the matter?’ they asked when they saw who their visitor was. ‘What brings you out at this hour?’
‘I’ve come to warn you,’ said Magpie, addressing herself in an urgent whisper to Bao-yu. ‘I heard my mistress just now jabbering to Sir Zheng about something, and though I couldn’t make out what they were talking about, I heard him say “Bao-yu” a couple of times. I thought I’d better put you on your guard in case he asks to see you tomorrow about anything.’
She turned and hurried out again as soon as she had finished speaking. Aroma told someone to run after her and ask her to stay for a cup of tea, but she was afraid of being shut inside the Garden when they closed the gate, and insisted on going back immediately.
Bao-yu knew that in Aunt Zhao’s twisted imagination he was regarded as an enemy, and though he did not know what she had said, the mere fact that she had been talking about him was enough to make him feel uncomfortable all over, much as Monkey did when he heard Tripitaka reciting the spell
for tightening the iron band round his head. After giving the matter some thought, he concluded that the only practical way in which he could prepare himself for the morrow would be by revising his texts. Should his father take it into his head to test him, he reasoned, then if only he could be word-perfect in his texts, it would not be so difficult to bluff his way through whatever else he might ask him. Having made the decision, he hurriedly threw a gown over his shoulders and prepared to begin some revision, bitterly regretting that Jia Zheng’s silence on the subject of lessons since his last return from duty had lulled him into a false sense of security.
‘I ought to have had more sense,’ he told himself. ‘One really ought to do a little bit every day, to keep in practice.’
He began to reckon up how much he could still recite from memory. He found that there was little more than The Great Learning, The Doctrine of the Mean and the two halves of the Analects that he could be absolutely sure of. The first half of Mencius he knew reasonably well, but certainly not well enough to be able to carry on from any sentence given him at random. The second half was virtually terra incognita. Of the Five Classics he was fairly familiar with the Poetry Classic because he was frequently having to read bits of it in connection with his own versifying. Though far from word-perfect, he probably knew it well enough to scrape through a test. He could not remember any of the other classics at all; but fortunately his father had so far never asked him to study them, so probably it would not matter. When it came to Old Style Prose, the case was rather different. Over the past few years he had read extracts from the Zuo, Gong-yang and Gu-liang commentaries on the Spring and Autumn Annals and various Han and Tang pieces, but he had only dipped into them as the fancy took him; he had not done any serious work on them. There was certainly no question of his being able to remember them. There was even less likelihood of his being able to pass muster on the Examination Essay. He had always detested this style of writing in any case. The Sage himself didn’t write that way, he argued, so how could one hope to expound the inner meaning of his teachings through such a medium? It was no more than a device used by vulgar fortune-seekers for starting themselves off on the golden road to success. Before he left, Jia Zheng had selected a hundred of these essays for him to read; but Bao-yu had only glanced at them occasionally, reading a paragraph here and a paragraph there as some particularly felicitous expression or the extravagance, humour or melancholy of the writer happened to catch his attention. He had never settled down to the serious analytical examination of even a single essay.
He began to revise; but the trouble was that whatever he revised now, he was sure to be asked about something else next day, and the whole night would not be long enough to revise everything. It soon became apparent that all he was succeeding in doing was getting himself into an even worse state of nerves than he had been in to begin with and, while studying to no purpose himself, preventing a whole roomful of girls from sleeping as well.
Aroma and the other senior maids could at least occupy themselves by trimming his lamp, pouring him cups of tea and so forth; but the younger ones could neither go to bed nor find any employment to keep themselves awake, and sat about the place, drooping and nodding in various attitudes of fatigue. Skybright became indignant.
‘Lazy little wretches! You sleep all day as it is. Just for once in your lives you are asked to stay up late, and look at you! If you don’t liven yourselves up a bit, I shall come and stick pins in you all!’
As she said this, there was a loud bang from the outer room. It turned out to have been caused by a little maid who had dozed off while sitting on the kang and in doing so had bumped her head against the partition. Waking with a start just as Skybright was uttering this threat, she assumed that the bump on the head she had just received must have been dealt her by Skybright. To the great amusement of the other girls she began tearfully begging her for mercy.
‘Oh no! Please, Skybright! I promise I won’t do it again!’
‘Don’t punish her,’ Bao-yu called out. ‘You ought to allow those younger ones to go to bed. And you older ones too – you don’t all need to stay up. You should be taking it in turns to get some sleep.’
‘Little ancestor!’ said Aroma exasperatedly. ‘You get on with your work! Just for this one night try to concentrate all your energies on studying. Once you’ve got over this hurdle, you can make what other arrangements you like!’
She sounded so earnest that for the next few minutes Bao-yu did in fact concentrate on his revision. Musk handed him a cup of tea to moisten his lips with while he recited. In taking it from her he noticed that she had only a short tunic on over her pantaloons.
‘It gets very cold at this time of night,’ he said. ‘You really ought to put something else on.’
Musk smiled grimly and pointed at his book.
‘Just forget about me for a while, could you? Get your mind fastened on this!’
Hardly had she finished saying this than Parfumée – or Aventurin’ as Bao-yu now called her – came running in from outside in a panic.
‘Oh God! A man’s just jumped down from the wall!’
‘Where? Where?’ cried the others, and began shouting for the older servants to go and look.
To Skybright this scare came as a blessing in disguise. Observing what heavy weather Bao-yu was making of his revision and foreseeing that if he wore himself out by staying up all night he would be in no condition for facing his ordeal in the morning, she had been casting about desperately for some means of rescuing him from it altogether. This panic about an intruder gave her an idea.
‘Why don’t you take advantage of this to get off tomorrow?’ she asked him. ‘Tell them that the shock has made you ill.’
This was a suggestion after Bao-yu’s own heart. He had the watch called and ordered them to light their lanterns and make a thorough search. But no intruder could be found.
‘I expect one of you young ladies had to go out for something in the dark and being still half-asleep, took the bough of a tree moving in the wind for a man,’ they said.
‘Nonsense!’ said Skybright. ‘You only say that as an excuse, because you haven’t been keeping watch properly and you’re afraid of getting into trouble. It wasn’t only one of us who saw him; a whole lot of us did; and Bao-yu was with us. The shock of it has made him quite ill. His face looks terrible and he’s burning hot all over. I shall be going over to Her Ladyship’s presently to get him a sedative. She’s sure to ask me what has upset him. What am I supposed to tell her? That he took fright from looking at a tree?’
This seemed to scare the women, for they made no reply but hurried off again to continue their search. Meanwhile Skybright and Aventurin went off to ask for some pills, deliberately making as big a fuss as possible to make sure that everyone knew that Bao-yu had been taken ill as a result of seeing something alarming in the Garden. Lady Wang sent someone to fetch the medicine for the two girls and gave orders for the members of the watch to make a full investigation. She was particularly anxious that the pages from the inner gate who did night duty at the point nearest to the Garden should be subjected to careful questioning. As a result of these orders there was a general hubbub in the Garden throughout all the rest of that night: lanterns and torches bobbing about and people scurrying to and fro in all directions. At four o’clock in the morning the stewards and stewardesses were summoned from their quarters and ordered to investigate all those servants of either sex who had been on night duty in the mansion.
When Grandmother Jia learned that Bao-yu was suffering from shock, she wanted to know why. The others were obliged to tell her.
‘I didn’t expect a thing like this to happen,’ she said. ‘It would be bad enough if the people who are supposed to be keeping us safe at night were merely being careless. What worries me is the thought that some of them may be criminals themselves!’
Lady Xing and You-shi had not long since arrived for their morning duty, and Li Wan, Xi-feng and the girls were also there in
attendance. None of them dared say anything. In the end it was Tan-chun who, smiling, stepped forwards and broke the silence.
‘It’s because Cousin Feng hasn’t been very well during these last few months,’ she said. ‘The servants in the Garden have got much more careless than they used to be. At first it was only once in a while: three or four doing night duty on the same shift getting together for a little game of dice or cards to keep themselves awake. But gradually they became more reckless, until now there are regular little card-schools with their own bankers and forty or fifty strings of cash changing hands at a sitting. A fortnight ago it even reached a point where a fight broke out over the cards.’
‘If you knew this at the time, why didn’t you tell anyone?’ said Grandmother Jia with some asperity.
‘I didn’t tell Mother because I knew she was busy and not feeling very well,’ said Tan-chun. ‘I did tell sister-in-law though, and the stewardesses and the women were given several warnings. As a matter of fact, I think they have been a bit more careful since then.’
‘You’re only a child,’ said Grandmother Jia. ‘You don’t know how serious this is. You think that gambling is a trifling matter and that the only thing to be feared from it is an occasional quarrel. But where there is gambling, there is probably drinking as well; and if there is drinking, probably gates are being left unlocked so that people can slip out to buy things; and when that happens, before you know where you are they will be letting thieves in – the easiest thing in the world when it is dark and there are so few people about. And then – Heaven help us! – with only you girls living there and the maids and women who wait on you – some of them no better than they should be, I dare say – anything could happen. There are things worse than burglary, the mere suspicion of which could have the direst consequences for all of you. No, this is not a matter to be dismissed so airily!’