The Warning Voice (11 page)

The Zhens' town house was very much like the Ning and Rong establishments – if anything, a shade more opulent. In answer to Bao-yu's questioning, Lady Zhen assured him that there was indeed a Bao-yu in Nanking. She kept the two of them to dinner and they stayed there for the rest of the day. Bao-yu was at last convinced.

As soon as they got back in the evening, Lady Wang made arrangements for entertaining Lady Zhen. A first-class dinner was ordered, a well-known troupe of adult players engaged, and Lady Zhen and her daughter were invited to come over next day. The day after that mother and daughter left town. They had no time for farewells: Sir Zhen had been ordered back to his post.

It was on the day of their departure that Bao-yu, after visiting Xiang-yun and finding that she was distinctly on the mend, went over to see how Dai-yu was getting on, only to be told that she was taking her afternoon nap. Nightingale chanced to be sitting outside in the covered walk doing some sewing, so, not wishing to disturb Dai-yu, he went over to talk to Nightingale instead.

‘How was she last night? Is her cough any better?'

‘Yes, a bit better,' said Nightingale.

‘Thank the Lord for that!' said Bao-yu fervently. ‘If only she could shake it off altogether!'

Nightingale looked up at him with amusement:

‘It's not often we hear
you
calling on the Lord.'

Bao-yu returned her smile:

‘Any doctor will do in an emergency.'

His eye took in her costume as he said this: a cotton-padded dress of thin black-and-white material with only a lined black satin waistcoat over the top of it. He reached out his hand to feel it.

‘What you're wearing is much too thin for this time of year. You're sitting in a draught here as well. If
you
go sick too, things here will be in a pretty pickle!'

‘Look,' said Nightingale sharply, ‘let's just
talk
to each other in future, shall we, without any of this pawing about? Now that we're all beginning to grow up, it creates such a bad impression. However much that horrible lot over there say things about you behind your back, you still carry on the same as when you were little. It
won't do
. Miss Lin has warned us time and again about getting into conversations with you. Look at the way she behaves towards you herself nowadays: she can't keep far enough away from you.'

She rose to her feet as she said this and moved, with her sewing, into the house.

The effect of this rebuff on Bao-yu's feelings was as if a bowl of icy water had been emptied over him. For some moments he was stunned and stood gazing stupidly at the clump of bamboos that were growing in front of him; then, as he became gradually aware that Mamma Zhu, to whose expert care they had been entrusted, was rooting about in their midst, he took himself off, but still in a daze, and scarcely aware what he was doing. Presently he sat down on a rock somewhere to think. Tears rolled down his cheeks, but he did not feel them. For an hour or more he continued to sit there motionless, turning the same question, ‘What am I to do?', over and over in his mind, but never reaching a conclusion.

Snowgoose, sent on an errand to fetch ginseng from Lady Wang's, passed by him on her way back. As she glanced sideways from the path, she saw a figure sitting motionless on a rock underneath a peach-tree, chin cupped in hand and evidently lost in thought, which she recognized, with some surprise, as Bao-yu.

‘It's ever so cold,' she thought: ‘what can he be, doing, all on his own out here? They say that sickly people are specially liable to catch things in spring. Perhaps he's gone mental.'

She went over to where he was sitting and, squatting down in front of him, peered smilingly into his face.

‘What are you doing out here?'

Bao-yu noticed her with a start.

‘Why do you come up to me like this? You're a girl, aren't you? She's told you all not to have anything to do with me, for fear of creating a scandal; so why do you still come up to me? If we're seen here talking together, there'll only be more gossip. Go back home!'

Snowgoose assumed that Dai-yu had been upsetting him and continued on her way. When she got back to the Naiad's House, Dai-yu was still asleep, so she gave the ginseng to Nightingale.

‘What was Her Ladyship doing?' Nightingale asked her.

‘She was having an afternoon nap, too. That's why I was so long. I'll tell you something that will make you laugh, Night. While I was sitting in the servants' room talking to Silver and waiting for Her Ladyship to get up, who should look in but Mrs Zhao, and beckoned me over to her. And do you know what she wanted? They're burying her brother tomorrow and she's got leave from Her Ladyship to go there for the wake. Young Fortune's going with her, and she said Fortune hasn't got anything to wear, would I please lend her my pale-blue dress? Well, I thought to myself, Fortune's got just as many dresses as I have; the only reason she wants to borrow someone else's is because she's too mean to let her wear her own there and risk getting it dirtied. I wouldn't mind lending it to her – even if she dirtied it, it wouldn't matter all that much – but what has
she
ever done for
us
? So I said, “Miss Lin told me to hand all my clothes and jewellery to Nightingale to look after. I should have to see Nightingale about it first, and I should have to tell Miss Lin. It might take rather a long time. I might not be able to get it to you before you go,” I said. “Perhaps it would be safer to borrow someone else's.”'

Nightingale laughed.

‘You're an artful little minx, aren't you? You don't want
to lend her your dress, but you take very good care that it's me and Miss Lin that get blamed for refusing it, and not you. Is Mrs Zhao going now, then, or first thing tomorrow?'

‘Now,' said Snowgoose. ‘She's probably already left.'

Nightingale nodded.

‘It looks as if Miss Lin's still asleep,' said Snowgoose. ‘If it wasn't her, I wonder who it was that made Bao-yu so upset. He was sitting out there in the Garden crying.'

‘Oh?' said Nightingale sharply. ‘Where?'

‘Under that peach-tree behind Drenched Blossoms Pavilion.'

Nightingale hurriedly put down her sewing and stood up.

‘You take over in case she calls. If she wants me, tell her I'll be back directly.'

She sped off to look for Bao-yu. There was a reassuring smile on her face as she came up to him.

‘That was only a harmless little remark I made, and it was only for your own and everyone else's good. Why did you need to get in such a passion and go rushing off to sit in the wind here and cry? Suppose you were to get ill as a result of this.'

Immediately Bao-yu was his smiling self once more:

‘I wasn't in a passion. I thought what you said was very reasonable. What upset me was the thought that if
you
felt that way, then other people must feel that way too, in which case soon
everyone
would stop having anything to do with me.'

Nightingale sat down companionably at his side.

‘A short while ago you moved away from me when I was standing opposite you,' said Bao-yu. ‘Now, apparently, it is all right to sit close beside me.'

‘I suppose you've forgotten the time when you and Miss Lin were talking together and Mrs Zhao burst in on you,' said Nightingale. ‘That was what made me careful. Now I've just heard that she's away, so it's quite safe. Incidentally, there's something about that occasion I've always wanted to ask you. You were about to say something about bird's nest when she came in but didn't have a chance to finish; and you've never referred to it since.'

‘Oh, it was nothing important,' said Bao-yu. ‘It's just that
once you start taking bird's nest, you've got to keep it up, and it seemed to me that as Cousin Bao is really here as our guest, it would be rather boorish to keep asking
her
for more; on the other hand it would be rather awkward to have to ask Lady Wang for it; so I dropped a hint to Grandma, and I rather think that she had a word on the subject with Feng. That's all I was going to tell Dai when we were interrupted. I've since heard that you're getting an ounce a day regularly, so there hasn't seemed any need to mention it.'

‘Oh, so it was
you
who told her about it,' said Nightingale. ‘In that case we owe you our thanks. We couldn't think what it was that could have suddenly put it into her head.'

‘She should take it regularly, every day,' said Bao-yu. ‘If she can keep it up for two or three years, she should get completely better.'

‘It's easy enough now,' said Nightingale, ‘but where will she find the money for it next year, when she goes home?'

Bao-yu was startled.

‘When who goes home? What home?'

‘When your Cousin Dai goes back to Soochow.'

Bao-yu laughed:

‘You're joking. Soochow is where her father came from, I know. But the reason we brought her here in the first place was because when my Aunt Lin died there was no one to look after her. There wouldn't be anyone in Soochow for her to go to. You
must
be lying.'

‘How arrogant you are!' said Nightingale scornfully. ‘I suppose you think yours is the only big family in the world. According to you, I suppose, other people only have fathers and mothers: they couldn't possibly have uncles and aunts on their father's side like you do. As a matter of fact, when Miss Lin came here it wasn't because there weren't any relations of her father's that she could have gone to; it was because Her Old Ladyship was afraid that being so little she might not be as happy with them as she would with her mother's folk. But it was only ever her intention to keep her here for a few years. As soon as she's old enough to be married, she'll have to go back to the Lin family. You could hardly expect a Lin family girl to spend the rest of her days among Jias, now
could you? The Lins may be too poor to afford a square meal, but they are people of education. They'd never sink so low as to hand over responsibility for one of their own number to their marriage-kin. Next year – next spring at the earliest, but certainly not later than next autumn – either your family will send her back to them or the Lins themselves will come here to fetch her. Miss Lin was talking to me about it only the other night. She said I was to ask you to get together all the little presents she's ever given you and send them back to her, and she'll do the same with yours.'

To Bao-yu these words were like a thunderclap exploding immediately overhead. Nightingale waited to see how he would reply, but he made no sound. Growing at last impatient, she was about to speak to him again when Skybright appeared. She had been looking for him everywhere, she said. He was wanted by his grandmother.

‘He's been here all this time talking about Miss Lin's illness,' said Nightingale. ‘I keep telling him how she is, but he won't believe me. If you want him to go with you, you'll have to take hold of him and
make
him go.'

She left then, without waiting to see more.

Skybright noticed Bao-yu's vacant expression. His forehead was beaded with sweat and there was a red, inflamed look about his face. She seized him by the hand and hurried him back to Green Delights.

Aroma was naturally alarmed to see Bao-yu come back in such a state, but attributed it to the weather: it was an inclement spring and he had gone out while overheated and exposed himself to the wind. But it soon became apparent that feverishness was the least serious of his symptoms. His eyes had a fixed and glassy stare, a little trickle of saliva ran from each corner of his mouth, and he seemed to have lost all consciousness of what he was doing: when they brought him a pillow he lay down; when they pulled him by the hand he sat up again; when they handed him a cup of tea he drank it; but all with the mechanical movements of an automaton. The maids, when they saw this, were in a panic; but not daring to report yet to Grandmother Jia, they first sent for Nannie Li to tell them what was wrong.

Nannie Li came promptly. Before she did anything else, she spent a good long while simply observing him. Then she asked him a few questions, but he made no reply. Then she took his wrist in her hand and felt his pulse. Finally, taking the raphe of his lip between her thumb and finger, she pinched it a couple of times, so hard that a deep imprint was made by her nails: yet he seemed to feel nothing.

‘Lord a mercy!' cried the old woman in a pathetic voice, and clinging to his body, she set up a howl and wept. Aroma, beside herself with anxiety, tugged imploringly at her sleeve:

‘Nannie, Nannie, have another look at him and tell us how serious it is, so that we know what to say to Their Ladyships. Don't just cry!'

Nannie Li hammered the bed with her fists:

‘It's all up with him, I tell you. All the heartache I've had on account of him was wasted.'

Aroma and the girls who, whatever else they might think of Nannie Li, respected her age and experience, assumed that she must know what she was talking about and all began crying too.

Skybright now told Aroma the circumstances in which she had found Bao-yu. Without a moment's hesitation Aroma flew over to the Naiad's House, arriving just as Nightingale was giving Dai-yu her medicine. Wasting no time on civility, she stalked straight up to Nightingale and confronted her there and then.

‘What did you say just now to our Bao-yu? Just go and take a look at him, will you, then go and tell Her Old Ladyship, because
I
won't be responsible.'

She concluded by sitting down rudely in a chair.

The sight of Aroma, with her angry, tear-stained face, behaving in a way that was so utterly uncharacteristic of her, filled Dai-yu with alarm.

‘What is it?'

Aroma made an effort to control herself and answered tearfully:

‘I don't know what Her Ladyship here can have said to him, but that simpleton of ours just stares into space without speaking, his hands and feet are icy-cold, and when Nannie
Li pinches him, he doesn't seem to feel anything. He looked half dead when I left. Even Nannie Li said it was all up with him. She's over there wailing for him now. He may be already dead for all I know.'