The Warning Voice (36 page)

‘The elder of Mrs Zhen's two sisters –'

‘Yes, yes,' said Xi-feng. ‘Get on with it! What about her?'

‘The elder of Mrs Zhen's two sisters was engaged when she was little to someone called Zhang. I think his name is Zhang Hua. Nowadays he and his family are very poor – beggars, almost. Mr Zhen promised them some money in return for breaking off the engagement.'

Xi-feng nodded, then turned to look at the maids: ‘You hear this, all of you? This is the little monster who was telling us a few minutes ago that he didn't know anything!'

Joker continued:

‘After that Mr Lian had the new house redecorated and she came there for the wedding.'

‘Where from?' said Xi-feng.

‘From her mother's place,' said Joker.

‘Hm, I see. Was she escorted by anyone?'

‘Only Master Rong and a few maids and nannies. No one else.'

‘What about Mrs Zhen?'

‘She came along a couple of days later with some presents.'

Xi-feng laughed and turned to address Patience behind her.

‘There you are! Don't you remember there were a couple of days when he hardly stopped praising Mrs Zhen and telling us what a wonderful person she was?'

The smile on her face quickly vanished as she turned back again.

‘And who waits on them there? – You, of course.'

Joker hurriedly kotowed but did not attempt to reply.

‘Come to think of it,' said Xi-feng, ‘I suppose all those times he told me he had to be away because he had business to do for our Ning-guo cousins, it was really this that he was up to.'

‘Sometimes he really was doing things for them, sometimes he was at the new house,' said Joker.

‘Who's living with her there?' said Xi-feng.

‘Her mother and her younger sister – leastways, the younger sister
was
living with her, but the day before yesterday she cut her throat.'

‘Why did she do that?' said Xi-feng.

Joker told her the whole story of San-jie and Liu Xianglian.

‘He was a lucky man,' said Xi-feng when he had finished telling it. ‘I've no doubt that if he'd married her she would have made him a most notorious cuckold. – Have you anything else to tell me?'

‘I've told you all I know, madam, and every word I've told you is true. You can ask other people. If you find a word of a lie in what I've told you, you can beat me to death and I shan't complain.'

Xi-feng bowed her head for some moments, reflecting. Eventually she looked up again and pointed her finger at him.

‘You are a wicked little wretch and I ought by rights to kill you for imagining that you could deceive me. I suppose you thought that by deceiving me you would do that stupid master of yours a favour and your new mistress would love you for it. If it weren't that I thought you were too frightened just now to have lied to me, I should have broken both your legs.' Her voice rose to a shout. ‘Get up!'

Joker kotowed several times, scrambled to his feet, and retreated as far as the threshold of the outer room, not daring to leave altogether.

‘Come back!' said Xi-feng. ‘I haven't finished with you yet.'

Joker turned and advanced some steps and stood with his arms held stiffly at his sides and his body inclined forwards in a respectful attitude of attention.

‘What's the hurry?' said Xi-feng. ‘Is your new mistress waiting to give you something?'

Joker dared not look up.

‘From now on you are not to go there any more,' said Xi-feng. ‘From now on, if I call for you at any time of any day, I shall expect you to be there straight away – and I warn you, you'd better see to it that I'm not kept waiting! All right. Be off!'

Again he withdrew. This time he got as far as the steps outside the door.

‘Joker!'

‘Madam?' He turned back once more.

‘Off to tell the master all about it, aren't you?'

‘Oh no, madam! I wouldn't dare.'

‘All right, go then; but if you breathe a word of this outside, I'll have you flayed!'

‘Yes, madam. Very good, madam.'

Joker now made his final exit.

‘Brightie!' Xi-feng called.

‘Yes'm!' Brightie came bounding forward.

Xi-feng opened her eyes very wide and stared at him for the length of time it would take to say two or three sentences; then finally she spoke.

‘So, Brightie. Very good. Excellent. Now go. And if anyone
outside breathes a word about this, I shall hold you responsible.'

‘Yes'm.'

Brightie withdrew very slowly from her presence; but in his case there was no recall.

‘Pour the tea,' said Xi-feng.

This was taken by the junior maids as a signal for them to withdraw, which they did immediately, leaving Xi-feng alone with Patience.

‘You heard all that?' said Xi-feng. ‘That's good.'

Patience smiled, but dared not say anything.

Xi-feng appeared to be thinking, and to be growing angrier and angrier the more she thought. She lay back with her head on the pillow and gave herself up wholly to her thoughts. Presently she frowned as if an idea had just occurred to her.

‘Patience, come here.'

‘Madam?'

‘I've thought what to do,' said Xi-feng. And she proceeded to tell Patience what she had planned.

But in order to know what that was, you must wait for the following chapter.

But we anticipate. Let us return to the point at which we left off in the last chapter.

After hearing Joker's revelations, Xi-feng deliberately concealed her knowledge from Jia Lian for several weeks. It was not until he had started out on his journey to Ping-an that she began putting her plan into execution.

The first thing she did was to call in the workmen – carpenters, decorators, paperers and so forth – and have the three-frame building on the east side of her and Jia Lian's courtyard converted into a smaller replica of the main apartment. On the fourteenth of the tenth month, when the decorating and furnishing of this apartment had been completed, she went to see Grandmother Jia and Lady Wang and announced her intention of going out first thing next morning to burn incense in a certain convent-temple in the vicinity. She would take only four companions with her, she said: Patience, Felicity, Zhou Rui's wife and Brightie's wife. She waited until they were about to get into their carriages on the morning of the fifteenth before revealing to her companions what their actual destination was to be. They were going to
Er-jie's house. Xi-feng had previously given instructions to the manservants who were to accompany them that they were to be dressed in mourning and that the carriage she rode in was to have mourning trappings. This was because Er-jie, she had discovered, had not long since suffered a second and greater bereavement: old Mrs You, who had never quite recovered from the shock caused by her third daughter's suicide, had, only two or three weeks previous to this date, taken a nap which turned out to be her last. Joker was told to lead the way, and it was he who, arriving at the house a little before the rest of the party, knocked on the gate to give the occupants warning of its coming. The Mattress came to the door. Joker had by this time resolved the problem of nomenclature to his own satisfaction:

‘Tell Mrs Er,' he said blandly, ‘that Mrs Lian is here.'

The immortal parts of the late Droopy's relict leaped through her cranium and described several somersaults in the air. She rushed inside to inform her mistress. Er-jie was no less startled than her servant when she heard the message, but even in such an extremity she could do no less than receive her visitor with the expected courtesies. Adjusting her dress, therefore, she went into the front courtyard to meet her. By this time Xi-feng's carriage had arrived outside the gate and its occupants were in process of descending from it. Er-jie watched her visitor curiously as she entered the outer gate, supported by Zhou Rui's wife, and Brightie's wife, one on either side. She was dressed in half-mourning, with hair-ornaments of silver and white and a spencer of some black material with a silver thread in it over the palest of pale blue gowns. Underneath the gown she was wearing a plain white satin skirt. Er-jie was particularly struck by her eyes:

Er-jie advanced to meet her as she entered the courtyard and dropped her a low curtsey, adopting, in the first words
she uttered, the form of address that an inferior wife uses in speaking to her chief.

‘Forgive me, sister, I had no idea that you were planning to favour me with an inspection or I should have gone outside to meet you.'

This was followed by another low curtsey, which Xi-feng, smiling graciously, returned. After curtseying had continued for some moments on either side, Xi-feng took Er-jie impulsively by the hand and the two young women walked hand in hand into the house. Inside, Er-jie made Xi-feng sit down in the place of honour and ordered one of the maids to bring a cushion and put it down in front of her on the floor.

‘I am still very young,' she explained to Xi-feng. ‘Since I first came here, everything has been decided for me by others, either my mother, when she was still with us, or my elder sister. Now that
you
have come, I hope – if you do not think me too unworthy – that you will allow me to take all my instructions from you. I promise to serve you with all the devotion of which I am capable.'

Having concluded her little speech, she knelt down on the cushion and kotowed. Xi-feng rose from the chair and bowed.

‘I am as young and inexperienced as you are, sister,' she said. ‘What I have done for Mr Lian has always been for his own good, as far as a silly, inexperienced woman like me could tell what that was. I begged him, as I am sure you would have done in my position, not to go sleeping out “under the willows” (you know what I mean) both for his health's sake and because I knew it would worry his parents; but Mr Lian completely misunderstood the spirit in which that advice was offered. It wouldn't have mattered so much if he'd deceived me about taking a mistress; but marrying a second wife is a very serious business. He really ought to have told me. It isn't as if I hadn't begged him to take a second wife. If he were to have a son, no matter by whom, I should stand to benefit as much as he would. It would be a support for me in my old age. But no. Mr Lian has got it firmly fixed in his mind that I am the sort of jealous woman who cannot tolerate a rival. And so he has to go off and do this without telling me. It's so unfair. Who am I to explain myself to? Only Heaven
above knows what a great injustice he has done me. When I first got wind of your marriage about ten days ago, I realized at once that it was this mistaken notion he has about my being so jealous that had prevented him from telling me. I have waited until he is away before visiting you because I wanted this opportunity of getting to know you properly. But that is not the only purpose of my visit. I want to ask you – to entreat you – to show your understanding of my position by leaving this place and coming back with me to the mansion, Let us live together, side by side, like sisters. Let us join forces in looking after him: seeing that he performs his duties properly and takes good care of his health. Surely that is how it ought to be? Just imagine what it will be like for me if you continue living here outside. Quite apart from my feelings, think of the effect it will have on my reputation – and on yours, too, for that matter. And even if you think
our
reputations are unimportant, as no doubt they are, consider what the effect will be on Mr Lian's reputation, which is a far more serious matter. I expect the servants say all sorts of nasty things about me behind my back. It is their way of having their revenge on me for being strict. I suppose it is only natural. You know the proverb. The woman who runs a household is like a water butt: all the dirt washes off on her. In our household I have three lots of seniors above me and cousins and sisters-in-law both single and married in my own generation. If I were really hard to get on with, how do you think all those people would have managed to put up with me for so long? Would I have come to you today if I were such a terrible person? Many wives hearing that their husband had married another woman and was living outside with her in secret would be unwilling even to set eyes on her. Heaven knows I've tried to accommodate Mr Lian. I've even offered him my Patience as a chamber-wife. I think Heaven and Earth and the Lord Buddha must have taken pity on me in letting me know about this marriage. They didn't want me to be destroyed by a pack of scandal-mongering servants. That's why I am asking you to come and live with me. I promise that your treatment will be exactly the same as mine in every respect: accommodation, service, clothing-allowance, everything.
There is so much that an intelligent person like you could do to help me if you had a mind to. Working side by side together, we shall not only give the lie to this malicious tittle-tattle of the servants which I find so wounding; we shall also be able to show Mr Lian when he gets back how wrong he has been in making me out to be jealous. The three of us will live in perfect harmony together. And all this I shall owe to you! But if you won't come with me, I am perfectly prepared to move in here with you. Provided that you put in an occasional good word for me with Mr Lian so that I am still left some ground to stand on, I should even be willing to hold your basin and comb your hair for you and wait on you like a servant.'

She concluded this discourse by breaking into noisy weeping. Indeed, so pitiful a spectacle did she present that Er-jie herself could not help weeping with her. After further bowings and curtseyings the two women sat down together as first and second wife and Patience came forward to make Er-jie her kotow. From the superior quality of her dress and general air of refinement Er-jie could guess who she was and hurriedly rose to prevent her.

‘No, no, you mustn't do that! You and I are equals.'

Xi-feng stood up, too.

‘Nonsense! Let her kotow to you,' she said, laughing. ‘She is only a maid. She is your maid as much as mine now and in future you must treat her as such.'

She ordered Zhou Rui's wife to take the First Meeting presents out of the bag she was carrying: four lengths of best quality dress material and four pairs of pearl and gold earrings with hair ornaments to match. There was more bowing and curtseying as Er-jie received them. The two wives sat down once more. Tea was served, and they began to talk things over as they sipped their tea. Xi-feng insisted that what had happened had chiefly come about through her own fault.

‘I blame no one else,' she said. ‘All I am asking for is a little sympathy.'

Er-jie was so lacking in guile herself that she had no difficulty in believing that Xi-feng was a good woman who had been slandered.

‘After all,' she told herself when she recollected the alarming things that Joker had said about Xi-feng's character, ‘servants
do
often revenge themselves by saying nasty things about their employers.'

And so, abandoning all caution, she began pouring her heart out unreservedly, confident that in Xi-feng she had found a friend. Confirmation of this favourable view in the form of tributes to the excellence of Xi-feng's household governance were not wanting from Mesdames Zhou and Brightie in the background.

‘She puts herself out too much for other people, that's her trouble. She gets no thanks for it, though. People only complain about her the more.'

They told Er-jie about the apartment that Xi-feng had made ready for her.

‘Beautiful, Mrs Er! You wait till you've seen it!'

Er-jie longed to live with Jia Lian inside the mansion like a respectable married woman and was therefore only too willing to comply with Xi-feng's request.

‘I
ought
to go back with you, sister: it is no less than my duty. But what about this place?'

‘Oh, that's no problem!' said Xi-feng. ‘Just get the boys to move out your boxes and bags for you. You won't be needing the furniture, you can leave that here. All you need to do is name whoever of your people is most reliable and we will get whoever it is to stay here and look after it for you.'

‘Now that I've met you, I should like to leave all those sort of decisions to you,' said Er-jie hurriedly. ‘I haven't been here very long and have no experience of running a household. I'm not able to decide things like this for myself. Why don't
you
take charge of these chests and boxes, sister? I have got hardly any things of my own. Almost everything in this place belongs to Mr Lian.'

Xi-feng told Zhou Rui's wife to make a mental note of all the movables and have them carried over later to Er-jie's new apartment. She then urged Er-jie to dress herself as quickly as possible for going out, and as soon as she was ready, walked hand in hand with her to the waiting carriage. Inside the carriage she insisted that Er-jie should sit beside her on the same seat.

‘This is rather a strait-laced household we are going into,' Xi-feng confided to Er-jie when they were alone in the carriage together. ‘Neither the old lady nor Lady Wang knows a word yet about your marriage. They would probably kill Mr Lian if they found out that he had married you while he was still in mourning. There is a very large garden at the mansion which all the young people live in and which other people very seldom go into. I think when we get back it would be better if you didn't meet Their Ladyships straight away but stayed in there for a few days while I think of some way of explaining about you to them.'

‘I leave all that to you, sister,' said Er-jie. ‘I will do whatever you think best.'

The boys accompanying the carriage had received advance instructions not to enter the mansion by the main gate on their return journey but to go straight in at the back. Descending from the carriage on her arrival, Xi-feng, having first shooed away a knot of curious bystanders, led Er-jie through the rear entrance of Prospect Garden and took her to meet Li Wan and the girls in Sweet-rice Village.

By this time nine out of ten of the Garden's inhabitants had heard about Jia Lian's second marriage, and when the news spread that Xi-feng was bringing the new wife into the Garden, curiosity drew numbers of them to Li Wan's place to meet her. All were impressed by her beauty and by her gentle, pleasing manner. After introducing them, Xi-feng warned each of them individually that she would kill anyone who mentioned Er-jie's presence to an outsider. The nannies and maids who worked in the Garden were all terrified of Xi-feng and knew in any case that Jia Lian's marrying a new wife in a period of family and national mourning was a very serious offence. They needed no persuading, therefore, to have as little to do with the matter as possible.

Xi-feng had a private word with Li Wan requesting her to look after Er-jie for a few days while she herself thought of some way of explaining about her to Grandmother Jia and Lady Wang. Li Wan knew that Xi-feng already had an apartment ready for Er-jie to move into at her own place and could well understand that a certain amount of secrecy had to be
maintained about a marriage contracted when in mourning; she could not therefore refuse to give Er-jie temporary lodging.

Xi-feng took Er-jie's own maids away from her and substituted a servant of her own. She also gave secret instructions to the older women to keep an eye on Er-jie, threatening them with the direst penalties if they allowed her to stray outside or deliberately run away. Having thus disposed of Er-jie for the time being, she went off to attend to the next stage of her plans. But of that, for the moment, we will say nothing.

Everyone who knew about this affair was mystified by the strange forbearance that Xi-feng had so far shown towards her rival and could not help wondering what had come over her. Er-jie for her part, observing how well all the young people in the Garden got on together, felt thoroughly reassured about her future in the bosom of so delightful a family.

But then, after a few days had gone by, there was an unpleasant incident with Mercy, the new maid whom Xi-feng had given her in place of her own. Er-jie had run out of hair-oil and told Mercy to run over to Xi-feng's and ask her for some.

‘I think you might be a bit more considerate, Mrs Er,' the maid said insolently. ‘Every day of her life Mrs Lian has to dance attendance on Their Ladyships and Lady Xing, she has two or three hundred servants waiting from daybreak every morning for a word from her to tell them what to do, she has at least a dozen important matters and thirty or forty little ones to deal with every day, all the family's social contacts to attend to, from Her Grace at the Palace and princes and dukes and other high-ups down to other families like our own, thousands of taels of silver to approve the spending of – and you want to go bothering her for some hair-oil! My advice to you, madam, is to be a bit more patient. After all, your marriage to Mr Lian was rather a hole-and-corner affair, wasn't it? It's only because of Mrs Lian's unheard-of generosity that you have been treated so well. A less tolerant person might have turned you out into the gutter – and not much you could have done to stop them!'

At the end of this verbal drubbing Er-jie could only hang her head in silence. If that was what other people thought about her, minor inconveniences like the lack of hair-oil would have to be endured.

But that was not the end of it. Following this outburst, Mercy began to grow more and more careless about serving Er-jie's meals. Either they came much too early or much too late, and the food she brought consisted invariably of stale old left-overs. Er-jie once or twice tried speaking to her about it, but Mercy only glared at her and lifted her voice up in noisy self-justification. Fearing that if the others heard the shouting they would think of her as one of those vulgar, shrewish women who are always quarrelling with their servants, Er-jie felt obliged to drop the matter and put up with the hardship as best she could.

After a week or so Xi-feng came to visit her. She was all smiles and loving sympathy, ‘my dear' this and ‘my dear' that.

‘If the servants are not giving you satisfaction, my dear, or are being insubordinate, do let me know and I shall have them beaten.'

She turned and spoke harshly to the maids and older women who were present.