The Golden Days Page 11

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  Prosperous, he could not play his part with grace,

  Nor, poor, bear hardship with a smiling face.

  So shamefully the precious hours he’d waste

  That both indoors and out he was disgraced.

  For uselessness the world’s prize he might bear;

  His gracelessness in history has no peer.

  Let gilded youths who every dainty sample

  Not imitate this rascal’s dire example!

  ‘Fancy changing your clothes before you have welcomed the visitor!’ Grandmother Jia chided indulgently on seeing Bao-yu back again. ‘Aren’t you going to pay your respects to your cousin ?’

  Bao-yu had already caught sight of a slender, delicate girl whom he surmised to be his Aunt Lin’s daughter and quickly went over to greet her. Then, returning to his place and taking a seat, he studied her attentively. How different she seemed from the other girls he knew!

  Her mist-wreathed brows at first seemed to frown, yet were not frowning;

  Her passionate eyes at first seemed to smile, yet were not merry.

  Habit had given a melancholy cast to her tender face;

  Nature had bestowed a sickly constitution on her delicate frame.

  Often the eyes swam with glistening tears;

  Often the breath came in gentle gasps.

  In stillness she made one think of a graceful flower reflected in the water;

  In motion she called to mind tender willow shoots caressed by the wind.

  She had more chambers in her heart than the martyred Bi Gan; And suffered a tithe more pain in it than the beautiful Xi Shi.

  Having completed his survey, Bao-yu gave a laugh.

  ‘I have seen this cousin before.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ said Grandmother Jia. ‘How could you possibly have done?’

  ‘Well, perhaps not,’ said Bao-yu, ‘but her face seems so familiar that I have the impression of meeting her again after a long separation.’

  ‘All the better,’ said Grandmother Jia. ‘That means that you should get on well together.’

  Bao-yu moved over again and, drawing a chair up beside Dai-yu, recommenced his scrutiny.

  Presently: ‘Do you study books yet, cousin?’

  ‘No,’ said Dai-yu. ‘I have only been taking lessons for a year or so. I can barely read and write.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  Dai-yu told him.

  ‘What’s your school-name?’

  ‘I haven’t got one.’

  Bao-yu laughed. ‘I’ll give you one, cousin. I think “Frowner” would suit you perfectly.’

  ‘Where’s your reference?’ said Tan-chun.

  ‘In the Encyclopedia of Men and Objects Ancient and Modern it says that somewhere in the West there is a mineral called “dai” which can be used instead of eye-black for painting the eyebrows with. She has this “dai” in her name and she knits her brows together in a little frown. I think it’s a splendid name for her !’

  ‘I expect you made it up,’ said Tan-chun scornfully.

  ‘What if I did?’ said Bao-yu. ‘There are lots of made-up things in books – apart from the Four Books, of course.’

  He returned to his interrogation of Dai-yu.

  ‘Have you got a jade?’

  The rest of the company were puzzled, but Dai-yu at once divined that he was asking her if she too had a jade like the one he was born with.

  ‘No,’ said Dai-yu. ‘That jade of yours is a very rare object. You can’t expect everybody to have one.’

  This sent Bao-yu off instantly into one of his mad fits. Snatching the jade from his neck he hurled it violently on the floor as if to smash it and began abusing it passionately.

  ‘Rare object! Rare object ! What’s so lucky about a stone that can’t even tell which people are better than others? Beastly thing! I don’t want it!’

  The maids all seemed terrified and rushed forward to pick it up, while Grandmother Jia clung to Bao-yu in alarm.

  ‘Naughty, naughty boy! Shout at someone or strike them if you like when you are in a nasty temper, but why go smashing that precious thing that your very life depends on?’

  ‘None of the girls has got one,’ said Bao-yu, his face streaming with tears and sobbing hysterically. ‘Only I have got one. It always upsets me. And now this new cousin comes here who is as beautiful as an angel and she hasn’t got one either, so I know it can’t be any good.’

  ‘Your cousin did have a jade once,’ said Grandmother Jia, coaxing him like a little child, ‘but because when Auntie died she couldn’t bear to leave her little girl behind, they had to let her take the jade with her instead. In that way your cousin could show her mamma how much she loved her by letting the jade be buried with her; and at the same time, whenever Auntie’s spirit looked at the jade, it would be just like looking at her own little girl again.

  ‘So when your cousin said she hadn’t got one, it was only because she didn’t want to boast about the good, kind thing she did when she gave it to her mamma. Now you put yours on again like a good boy, and mind your mother doesn’t find out how naughty you have been.’

  So saying, she took the jade from the hands of one of the maids and hung it round his neck for him. And Bao-yu, after reflecting for a moment or two on what she had said, offered no further resistance.

  At this point some of the older women came to inquire what room Dai-yu was to sleep in.

  ‘Move Bao-yu into the closet-bed with me,’ said Grandmother Jia, ‘and put Miss Lin for the time being in the green muslin summer-bed. We had better wait until spring when the last of the cold weather is over before seeing about the rooms for them and getting them settled permanently.’

  ‘Dearest Grannie,’ said Bao-yu pleadingly, ‘I should be perfectly all right next to the summer-bed. There’s no need to move me into your room. I should only keep you awake.’

  Grandmother Jia, after a moment’s reflection, gave her consent. She further gave instructions that Dai-yu and Bao-yu were each to have one nurse and one maid to sleep with them. The rest of their servants were to do night duty by rota in the adjoining room. Xi-feng had already sent across some lilac-coloured hangings, brocade quilts, satin coverlets and the like for Dai-yu’s bedding.

  Dai-yu had brought only two of her own people with her from home. One was her old wet-nurse Nannie Wang, the other was a little ten-year-old maid called Snowgoose. Considering Snowgoose too young and irresponsible and Nannie Wang too old and decrepit to be of much real service, Grandmother Jia gave Dai-yu one of her own maids, a body-servant of the second grade called Nightingale. She also gave orders that Dai-yu and Bao-yu were to be attended in other respects exactly like the three girls: that is to say, apart from the one wet-nurse, each was to have four other nurses to act as chaper-ones, two maids as body-servants to attend to their washing, dressing, and so forth, and four or five maids for dusting and cleaning, running errands and general duties.

  These arrangements completed, Nannie Wang and Nightingale accompanied Dai-yu to bed inside the tent-like summer-bed, while Bao-yu’s wet-nurse Nannie Li and his chief maid Aroma settled him down for the night in a big bed on the other side of the canopy.

  Like Nightingale, Aroma had previously been one of Grandmother Jia’s own maids. Her real name was Pearl. Bao-yu’s grandmother, fearful that the maids who already waited on her darling boy could not be trusted to look after him properly, had picked out Pearl as a girl of tried and conspicuous fidelity and put her in charge over them. It was Bao-yu who was responsible for the curious name ‘Aroma’. Discovering that Pearl’s surname was Hua, which means ‘Flowers’, and having recently come across the line

  The flowers’ aroma breathes of hotter days

  in a book of poems, he told his grandmother that he wanted to call his new maid ‘Aroma’, so ‘Aroma’ her name thenceforth became.

  Aroma had a certain dogged streak in her nature which had made her utterly devoted to Grandmother Jia as long as she was Grandmother Jia’s servant, but
which caused her to become just as exclusively and single-mindedly devoted to Bao-yu when her services were transferred to him. Since she found his character strange and incomprehensible, her simple devotion frequently impelled her to remonstrate with him, and when, as invariably happened, he took not the least notice of what she said, she was worried and hurt.

  That night, when Bao-yu and Nannie Li were already asleep, Aroma could hear that Dai-yu and Nightingale on their side of the canopy had still not settled down, so, when she had finished taking down her hair and making herself ready for bed, she tiptoed through the muslin curtains and in a friendly way inquired what was the matter. Dai-yu invited her to sit down, and when she had seated herself on the edge of the bed, Nightingale proceeded to tell her what was troubling her new mistress.

  ‘Miss Lin is all upset. She has just been crying her eyes out because she says she only just arrived here today, and yet already she has started young hopeful off on one of his turns. She says if that jade had been really smashed, it would have been all her fault. That’s what she’s so upset about. I’ve had no end of a job trying to comfort her.’

  ‘You mustn’t take on so, Miss,’ said Aroma. ‘You’ll see him do much stranger things than that before he’s finished. If you allow yourself to feel hurt every time he carries on like that, he will always be hurting you. Try not to be so sensitive, Miss!’

  Dai-yu thanked her and promised to bear in mind what she had said, and after talking a little longer, they all settled down and went to sleep.

  Rising early next day, they visited Grandmother Jia to wish her a good morning and then went over to Lady Wang’s. They found her closeted with Wang Xi-feng, deep in discussion of a letter which had just arrived from Nanking, and attended by two women who had come with a message from Lady Wang’s elder brother and sister-in-law. Tan-chun and the girls told Dai-yu, who knew nothing of the matter under discussion, that they were talking about Xue Pan, the son of their Aunt Xue who lived in Nanking.

  It seemed that Xue Pan, relying on wealth and family pull to protect him from the consequences, had taken another man’s life. The case was at present under investigation by the Ying-tian-fu yamen. Their uncle Wang Zi-teng had been informed of it, and had sent these messengers to the members of the family in the Rong mansion to suggest that they should invite Xue Pan to the capital.

  But the outcome of this discussion will be dealt with in the following chapter.

  Chapter 4

  The Bottle-gourd girl meets an

  unfortunate young man

  And the Bottle-gourd monk settles a

  protracted lawsuit

  When Dai-yu and the girls went to call on Lady Wang, they found her in the midst of discussing family affairs with the messengers from her elder brother and his wife and heard talk of their aunt’s family in Nanking being involved in a case of manslaughter. Since Lady Wang was obviously preoccupied with this matter, the girls went off to call on Li Wan.

  Li Wan’s husband Jia Zhu had died young, but fortunately not without issue. He left her a son called Jia Lan who was now just five years old and had already begun his schooling. Like most of the Jia women, Li Wan was the daughter of a distinguished Nanking official. Her father, Li Shou-zhong, had been a Director of Education.

  Up to Li Shou-zhong’s time, all members of the clan, including the women, had been given a first-class education; but when Li Shou-zhong became head of the family, he founded his educational policy for girls on the good old maxim ‘a stupid woman is a virtuous one’ and, when he had a daughter of his own, refused to let her engage in serious study. She was permitted to work her way through The Four Books for Girls and Lives of Noble Women, so that she might be able to recognize a few characters and be familiar with some of the models of female virtue of former ages; but overriding importance was to be attached to spinning and sewing, and even her name ‘Wan’, which means a kind of silk, was intended to symbolize her dedication to the needle.

  Thanks to her upbringing, this young widow living in the midst of luxury and self-indulgence was able to keep herself like the ‘withered tree and dead ashes’ of the philosopher, shutting out everything that did not concern her and attending only to the duties of serving her husband’s parents and bringing up her child. Whatever leisure this left her was devoted to her little sister-in-law and cousins, accompanying them at their embroidery or hearing them recite their lessons.

  With such gentle companions to console her, Dai-yu, though a stranger and far from home, soon had nothing apart from her old father that she need worry about.

  Let us now turn to the affairs of Jia Yu-cun, newly installed in the yamen at Ying-tian-fu.

  No sooner had he arrived at his new post than a case involving manslaughter was referred to his tribunal. It concerned two parties in dispute over the purchase of a slave-girl. Neither had been willing to give way to the other, and in the ensuing affray one of the parties had been wounded and had subsequently died. After reading the papers in the case, Yu-cun summoned the plaintiff for questioning and received from him the following account of what had happened:

  ‘The murdered man was my master, Your Honour. Although he did not realize it at the time, the girl he purchased had been kidnapped by the man who was selling her. My master paid him in advance, and arranged to receive the girl into his house three days from the date of purchase, the third day being a lucky day. The kidnapper, having already pocketed my young master’s money, then quietly went off and sold her again to Xue. When we found this out, we went along to seize him and to collect the girl.

  ‘But unfortunately this Xue turned out to be a powerful Nanking boss, who evidently thought that by money and influence he could get away with anything. He set a crowd of his henchmen on to my young master and beat him up so badly that he died.

  ‘Xue and his henchmen have now disappeared without trace, leaving only a few retainers who were not involved in the crime. But though it is a year since I first brought this charge, no one has yet done anything to help me. I beseech Your Honour to arrest the criminals and to uphold the course of justice! Both the living and the dead will be everlastingly grateful to you if you do!’

  ‘This is monstrous I’ said Yu-cun in a towering rage. ‘Am I to understand that a man can be beaten to death and the murderer walk off scot-free with nobody lifting a finger to arrest him ?’ and he took up a warrant and was on the point of sending his runners to seize the murderer’s dependants and bring them to court so that they might be put to the torture, when he observed one of the ushers signalling to him with his eyes not to issue the warrant. His resolution somewhat shaken, he put it down again and adjourned to his private chambers, dismissing everyone except the usher, whom he ordered to remain behind in attendance.

  When they were alone together the usher, with a broad smile on his face, came forward and touched his hand and knee to the ground in the Manchu salute.

  ‘Your Honour has gone a long way up in the world during these past eight or nine years! I don’t expect you would remember me!’

  ‘Your face is certainly familiar,’ said Yu-cun, ‘but for the moment I simply can’t place it.’

  The usher smiled again. ‘Has Your Honour forgotten the place you started from ? Do you remember nothing of the old times in Bottle-gourd Temple?’

  With a start of recognition, Yu-cun remembered. The usher had been a little novice in the temple where he once lodged.

  Finding himself homeless after the fire, and bethinking himself that a post in a yamen was a fine, gentlemanly way of earning a living, and being furthermore heartily sick of the rigours of monastic life, the little novice had taken advantage of his youth to grow his hair again and get himself a post as an usher. Small wonder that Yu-cun had failed to recognize him!

  ‘Ah, so it was an old acquaintance!’ said Yu-cun, grasping him warmly by the hand and urging him to sit down for a chat. But the usher would not be seated.

  ‘Come,’ said Yu-cun, ‘as a friend of my early, hard-up days you are enti
tled to. After all, this is a private room. Why not ?’

  The usher permitted himself to perch one of his haunches sideways on the edge of a chair.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Yu-cun, ‘why did you stop me issuing that warrant just now?’

  ‘Your Honour is new to this post. Surely you must have provided yourself before you left with a copy of the Mandarin’s Life-Preserver for this province ?’

  ‘What is the Mandarin’s Life-Preserver?’ Yu-cun inquired curiously.

  ‘Nowadays every provincial official carries a private handlist with the names of all the richest, most influential people in his area. There is one for every province. They list those families which are so powerful that if you were ever to run up against one of them unknowingly, not only your job, but perhaps even your life might be in danger. That’s why they are called “life-preservers”.

  ‘Now take this Xue you were dealing with just now. Your Honour couldn’t possibly try conclusions with him! Why do you suppose this case has remained unsettled for so long ? It’s a straightforward enough case. The reason is simply that none of your predecessors dared touch it because of the unpleasantness and loss of face it would have caused them.’

  While he was speaking he had been fishing for a copy of the Mandarin’s Life-Preserver in his pocket. This he now presented to Yu-cun for his inspection. It contained a set of doggerel verses in which were listed the big families and most powerful magnates of the area in which he was working. It went something like this:

  Shout hip hurrah

  For the Nanking Jia!

  They weigh their gold out

  By the jar.

  The Ah-bang Palace

  Scrapes the sky,

  But it could not house

  The Nanking Shi.

  The King of the Ocean

  Goes along,

  When he’s short of gold beds,

  To the Nanking Wang.

  The Nanking Xue

  So rich are they,

  To count their money

  Would take all day…

  Before Yu-cun had time to read further, a warning chime from the inner gate and a shout outside the door announced the arrival of a Mr Wang on an official call. Yu-cun hastily donned the hat and robe of office which he had temporarily laid aside and went out to meet the visitor. About the length of time it would take to eat a meal elapsed before he returned and resumed his conversation with the usher.