The Warning Voice (38 page)

She spat two or three times in quick succession.

‘I
did
try,' said You-shi tearfully. ‘The others here will tell you, if you don't believe me. I tried very hard to dissuade them. It's not my fault that they wouldn't listen. What was I supposed to do? But I don't blame you for being angry. It's just one more thing that I shall have to bear.'

All the Ning-guo concubines, maids and womenservants were by now silently entreating for their mistress, so that the room seemed suddenly to have filled with row upon row of kneeling figures. The most senior of the servants now smilingly addressed Xi-feng on her mistress's behalf.

‘You're generally such a wise, understanding person, Mrs Lian: even though our mistress is at fault, you ought not to be too hard on her – leastways, not in front of us servants. You and our mistress have always been such good friends. Leave her a bit of face now, please!'

She handed her a cup of tea, but Xi-feng dashed it to the floor. After a bit she did, however, stop crying and rolled up her hair, which had come undone. But the tone in which she addressed Jia Rong was still an angry one.

‘Go and fetch your father. There's something I want to ask him to his face. I want to ask him about this new rule which says that a man may marry when he is in mourning, barely thirty-five days after his uncle's death. It's something I've never heard of before. I should like him to tell me about it so that I shall be able to teach it to the younger generation.'

Jia Rong kotowed and remained upon his knees.

‘This business had nothing to do with either of my parents,' he said. ‘I was the one who put Uncle up to it. I don't know what came over me; I must have been out of my mind. My father knows nothing about it. If you insist on having it out with him, he will undoubtedly kill me. I'd rather you punished
me yourself – in fact, I should welcome it. As for the lawsuit, I'm quite incapable of handling a big thing like that myself. One “hides a broken arm inside one's sleeve”: surely you, of all people, know that, Auntie? You've got a very silly nephew, I'm afraid, and he has done a very silly thing. There's nothing for it, you will just have to deal with the matter for us, as you would if your cat or your dog had done something naughty and you had to clear up after it. Imagine you had a good-for-nothing son like me who had got himself into terrible trouble: wouldn't you still go on caring for him, in spite of all the suffering he had caused you?'

He concluded by kotowing again and looked as if he might go on doing so indefinitely. His pathetic abjectness soon melted Xi-feng; but she could not change her tune too abruptly when there were so many pairs of eyes watching her. She did not answer him, therefore, but merely raised him up with a sigh and, wiping her eyes, addressed herself once more to You-shi.

‘You must forgive me, kinswoman. It's because I am so young and inexperienced. When I heard that there was someone suing us, I simply lost my head. That's why I have been behaving so badly. As Rong says, “One hides a broken arm inside one's sleeve”: I must ask you to forget all those nasty things I was saying just now and have a word with Zhen on my behalf to see if he can't get this lawsuit settled out of court.'

‘Certainly.'

‘Of course.'

In their eagerness to reassure her, You-shi and Jia Rong answered her simultaneously.

‘Whatever happens, Auntie,' said Jia Rong, ‘I promise you that Uncle Lian won't be involved. You mentioned just now that you had already had to spend five hundred taels on this case. Mother and I will certainly find some way of making that good. We can't possibly allow you to be out of pocket because of this. That would be unthinkable. We must ask one thing of you, though. Do, please, cover up for us at the other house. Please don't let Grandma and Lady Wang get to know about this!'

Xi-feng answered him scornfully.

‘You were willing enough to go over my head when you planned this thing in the first place. Now that it's gone wrong and you need someone to cover up for you, you've decided that you need me after all. I may be stupid, but I'm not that stupid!' Again she ignored him and addressed herself to Youshi. ‘Your Cousin Lian
is
my husband, don't forget. You all say that you acted as you did out of your concern that he should have an heir. Well, don't you think I share in that concern myself? I look on your sister as if she were my own. I was so happy when I first heard about her and Lian that I couldn't sleep all night. I wanted the servants to start decorating a room for her immediately, so that I could have her to come and live with us. But you know what servants are. They told me I was too hasty and that I ought to tell Grandmother and Lady Wang first. I certainly wasn't going to take that advice, and I threatened them with all sorts of pains and penalties if they said anything about it to anyone themselves. Unfortunately my threatening was of no avail. Just as I thought I'd succeeded in hushing the matter up, the very worst thing happened: a person called Zhang Hua suddenly popped up out of nowhere and brought a lawsuit against us. I was so scared that for two nights I didn't sleep a wink. I didn't dare tell anyone else about it. All I could do was to get the servants to try to find out who this Zhang Hua was and what it was that had made him so bold. After two days investigating they came back and told me. It seems that he is a thoroughly worthless character – a down-and-out. “Mrs Er is this man's betrothed,” they said. “At the present moment he is so hard up that sooner than the of hunger and cold, he is prepared to do almost anything. This lawsuit is simply a last desperate attempt to make some money. He reckons that even if he dies in the attempt it will be a better death than starving. Anyway,” they said, “you can hardly blame him for trying. The master really
has
been a bit hasty: marrying during a period of national mourning is one offence; marrying in a period of family mourning is another; marrying without parental consent is a third; and marrying bigamously is a fourth. They say that the man sentenced to death by a thousand cuts will dare to pull the Emperor off his horse. A man like this Zhang
Hua who is crazed by poverty will do anything. With such good arguments in his favour, he'd be a fool
not
to sue!” Well now, I ask you! Even if I'd been a forensic genius, which I'm not, hearing them say that would have been enough to shut me up. What could I do? Lian was away. There was no one at hand to advise me. All I could think of was to try and buy him off. But the trouble is, the more you give to people like that, the more they twist the knife in you and think up more and more pretexts for getting money out of you. And I am like a boil on a mouse's tail: there's a limit to what can be squeezed out of me. It was because I was feeling so desperate that I –'

‘Don't worry about the money,' You-shi and Jia Rong both chimed in, not waiting for her to finish. ‘That's something we can certainly take care of for you.'

‘If Zhang Hua is only suing because he wants money,' said Jia Rong, ‘I think I can now see what to do. We must promise him money on condition that he will admit that the charges he brought against us were false ones. Of course, we shall have to spend a bit of money to see that he isn't too heavily proceeded against; but once the case has been dismissed and he has been released, all we have to do is give him the money we promised, and that should be the end of it.'

Xi-feng tutted and looked amused.

‘Brilliant! No wonder you made such a mess of your match-making if
this
is the way you go about things! I always thought that you were intelligent, but I see now that I was wrong. If we do as you suggest, he will pretend to agree, the case will be called off, and that will appear to be the end of it. But don't you see, if you put money into the hand of a fellow like that, he will get through it in about four or five days and then think up some other villainy as a means of getting more? Even though we have nothing to fear from him, he will still be a constant source of worry. What you propose in any case plays straight into his hands, because it enables him to say that we must have something to be ashamed of or we wouldn't be offering him money.'

Jia Rong was a sharp young man and quickly saw what his aunt was driving at.

‘I've got another idea,' he said. ‘Perhaps I should be the one to clear this mess up after all, since I am the one who got us into it. I shall ask Zhang Hua straight out what his intentions are. Is it definitely Aunt Er he wants, or is he willing to make do with someone else if we will give him the money? If it is definitely Aunt Er and no one else will do, I shall simply have to break it to her that she must go and join him.'

‘That's all very well, but I don't want to part with your Aunt Er,' said Xi-feng hurriedly. ‘In fact, I refuse to hear of it. Even suppose she were willing, what would people think of us if we allowed her to go? No, I think we must keep her, even if it means giving him more money.'

Jia Rong knew perfectly well that although Xi-feng said this, she was secretly longing to get rid of Er-jie and was merely anxious that if she did so it should be with her reputation for womanly virtue untarnished. He deemed it safest not to dispute with her, however, but merely to agree with everything she said.

‘This outside part of the business should not be too hard to settle,' said Xi-feng. ‘In the long run it's here at home that we are going to have the difficulty. Hadn't you better come with me to explain all about this to Grandmother and Lady Wang?'

This threw You-shi into another panic. She seized Xi-feng by the hand and earnestly entreated her to think of some lie which would obviate this necessity.

‘If you are not capable of dealing with the consequences, you ought not to do these things in the first place,' said Xi-feng coldly. ‘Really! It quite disgusts me to hear you bleat like this! Oh well. I wasn't
going
to help you out of this fix, but I am such a weak, soft-hearted creature. I suppose I shall have to. You'd better stay out of this, then. I'll take your sister on my own to make her kotow to Grandmother and the ladies. I shall say that this is your sister and that I have taken a great fancy to her. I shall tell them that because I haven't so far managed to give Lian a son, I had been thinking of buying two girls to serve him as chamber-wives, but that since seeing your sister I had thought how much nicer it would be to have her instead as his Number Two and keep it all inside the
family. Then I shall say that since her mother and sister died she has been living in very reduced circumstances and would have found it impossible to hold out on her own until the end of the hundred days mourning, so I have taken it upon myself to invite her here to live with us. I shall tell them that I've already had a room made ready for her and would like her to move in there as a temporary measure until the mourning period is over and she is allowed to sleep with Lian. All lies, of course, but I am sufficiently brazen to get away with them. Even if there
is
any trouble, I promise that it shan't come near you. Well, what about it? Do you think that will do?'

You-shi and Jia Rong were all smiles.

‘Very handsome of you, and very resourceful, too. But then you always were both of those things. When this affair is safely out of the way, we shall come round and make you a kotow.'

‘Fiddlestick! I don't want your kotows,' said Xi-feng. ‘She pointed her finger at Jia Rong. ‘I know
you
now for what you are.'

Her face reddened as she said this, and for a moment she seemed on the point of tears. Jia Rong put on his most winning smile.

‘Come on now, forgive and forget, won't you, just this once?'

He knelt once more, but she turned her head away and ignored him. He got to his feet again, still smiling.

You-shi made the servants bring a basin of water and a vanity-box, so that Xi-feng could wash her face and hands and comb her hair, and gave orders to hurry on the dinner. Xi-feng insisted that she must go back, but You-shi was equally insistent that she should stay and eat with them.

‘If you go off now like this, how shall we ever have the face to visit you at your place in the future?'

Jia Rong added his own smiling persuasion.

‘Come on, Auntie! I promise that in future I shall serve you as a truly devoted nephew, strike me dead if I don't!'

Xi-feng gave him a look.

‘Pshaw! Who believes –?'

But she did not finish.

The maids and old women had been busy meanwhile laying the table. You-shi made a selection from the dishes with her own chopsticks to put on Xi-feng's plate and Jia Rong knelt down beside her and offered her a cupful of wine. When Xi-feng and You-shi had eaten, a maid served them with tea to rinse their mouths with and then with a better tea to drink. After a couple of sips of the latter, Xi-feng rose to go. Jia Rong saw her all the way back to her own place.

As soon as she was back, Xi-feng went into the Garden to tell Er-jie about these latest developments. She told her how worried she had been when she heard about the lawsuit, and what she had found out as a result of her inquiries. Then she explained what had to be done now in order to ensure that none of the others got into trouble.

But if you want to know how Xi-feng's plan turned out in the event, you will have to read the following chapter.