The Warning Voice (62 page)

Bao-yu, walking slightly ahead of them, pretended not to
have heard; but after going only a few steps further, he halted abruptly.

‘Oh dear, I have to pay a little call!' he said. ‘What am I going to do?'

‘That's all right,' said Musk. ‘We're not going to lose you in broad daylight!'

She told the two junior maids to go with him.

‘Ripple and I will come back for you when we've got rid of these.'

‘Can't you wait?' said Bao-yu. ‘I shan't be a moment.'

‘Oh, do let us get rid of these things first!' said Musk. ‘Whatever must we look like, traipsing after you with all this stuff? Like the Wardrobe Master and the Clerk of the Inkhorn in a royal procession!'

Bao-yu, who had been hoping that they would go, indicated that they might do so and went off with the two junior maids to a secluded corner behind some rocks where he could question them.

‘Did Aroma send anyone to Skybright's place after I had gone?'

‘Yes, she sent Mamma Song,' said one of the girls.

‘What did Mamma Song say when she got back?'

‘They told her that Skybright was lying with her head back calling out all night long, but in the early morning she stopped calling and closed her eyes. They said it looked as if she was going.'

‘Who was she calling for?' Bao-yu asked hurriedly.

‘Her mother,' said the girl. ‘They said she just went on calling “Mamma!” “Mamma!” all night long.'

‘Didn't she call for anyone else?' said Bao-yu, brushing away a tear.

‘They didn't mention anyone else,' said the girl.

‘Oh, you're a silly girl!' said Bao-yu impatiently. ‘I'm sure you must have misheard.'

‘She certainly
is
a silly girl,' the other little maid piped up. A sharp little creature, she had sensed at once what Bao-yu was hoping for and was willing to supply it. ‘I not only heard exactly what Mrs Song said; I even managed to slip out and see Skybright myself.'

‘How did you come to do that?' Bao-yu asked her.

‘Remembering how much kinder than any of the other senior maids Skybright had always been to me,' said the girl, ‘I thought to myself that though I couldn't do anything else for her in her trouble, I could at least go to visit her. Even if someone saw me and reported me to Her Ladyship and I got a beating, it would be worth it after all she had done for me. So, at the risk of a beating, I stole round to her cousin's place to see her. Although she was so near death, her mind was quite unaltered. She held my hand and opened her eyes wide when she saw me. “Where's Bao-yu gone?” she said. When I told her, she sighed. “Oh,” she said, “I shan't be able to see him, then.” “Can't you hold out a bit?” I asked her. She smiled at me. “No,” she said. “You see, I'm not really dying; I'm going to heaven to be a flower-spirit. The Jade Emperor has given me the job of looking after the flowers.” She said, “I have to leave at half-past two to take up the job, and Bao-yu won't be home until a quarter to three, so we shall miss seeing each other by only a quarter of an hour. Usually when people are dying, King Yama sends his demons to fetch their souls, and if you want to delay a bit, all you have to do is burn a bit of spirit money and make a little offering of some rice and tea, and they will leave you alone for a few minutes while they go after the money and stuff. But when the heavenly messengers summon you, it's different. You can't keep
them
waiting for a single moment.” At the time I didn't quite believe her, but when I got back I kept my eye on the clock and sure enough it was exactly a quarter to three, as she'd said it would be, when they told us you'd got back and we were to go over and wait for you.'

‘You can't read,' said Bao-yu, ‘so you wouldn't know about these things. But there are in fact flower-spirits: I've read about them. Not only is there a spirit in charge of all the flowers, but there are also lesser spirits in charge of each separate kind of flower. I wonder which Skybright is going to be.'

The little maid quickly glanced round the Garden for inspiration. Her eye lit on some hibiscus bushes which, this being now the second half of autumn, were already in full bloom.

‘I asked her myself,' she said. ‘“Tell me what kind of
flower you are going to be responsible for,” I said, “so that after you are gone we shall know where and when to make you offerings.” “I'll tell you,” she said, “but you mustn't let anyone else but Bao-yu know about it. These are immortal matters which are supposed to be kept secret.” Then she told me: the hibiscus flower.'

Bao-yu found nothing extraordinary in this. On the contrary, after hearing it, his sorrow turned instantly into delight. He looked round and smiled happily as his eyes rested on the hibiscus bushes.

‘Such a flower is worthy to be looked after by such a person!' he said. ‘I felt sure that someone of her qualities would have work to do in the world. But –' he became sad once more as he reflected – ‘although
her
sufferings are over, it still means that I shall never see her again.'

Then it occurred to him that, though he had failed to be with her at the end, there was nothing to stop him going to see her now and paying his last respects to her body. After the five or six years she had been with him and all that she had done for him in that time, he surely owed it to her. He hurried back to carry out this resolve, running into Musk and Ripple on his way. They had just started out again to look for him.

Back at Green Delights he hurriedly dressed up again and, telling the girls that he was going to pay a call on Dai-yu, slipped out of the Garden and made his way, on his own this time, to the place where he had visited Skybright the day before, expecting to find her laid out there in her coffin.

Skybright had died not, as the lying maid had said, that afternoon, but early in the morning. As soon as she had breathed her last, the cousin and his wife had gone to the mansion to tell Lady Wang in the hope of getting some money out of her for the funeral. Lady Wang had given them ten taels and told them to get the body out of the house as quickly as possible and have it cremated.

‘The girl died of a consumption,' she said. ‘You mustn't keep the body in the house, whatever you do.'

Impressed by this advice, they had hurried off with the money and made arrangements to have the body encoffined
and carried to the burning ground outside the city without delay. Skybright's clothes and jewellery, worth between three and four hundred taels, they kept for themselves: a nice little sum to put by for their old age. When all the arrangements had been completed, they shut up the house and accompanied the hearse outside the city to see the body cremated. Bao-yu arrived, therefore, to find the house locked up and nobody at home. Once more frustrated, he stood for some minutes gazing blankly at the door. Finally, since there was nothing else he could do, he turned round and walked back to the Garden. The thought of returning to his room was distasteful to him. He decided to call in at Dai-yu's on the way back; but Dai-yu's maids told him that their mistress was out.

‘She's gone to see Miss Bao,' they said.

Bao-yu made his way to All-spice Court. To his surprise he found it silent and deserted, and when he peeped inside, he could see that it had the empty, cheerless look of an uninhabited house. He had a vague recollection of having heard some days previously that Bao-chai was thinking of moving out; but he had been so busy with homework during the past few days that it had gone out of his mind. Now it appeared that she really had moved.

A sort of blankness came over him. Chess had gone. Picture had gone. Parfumée and the other four little actresses had gone. Skybright was dead. Now, it seemed, Bao-chai and her lot had gone, too. And though Ying-chun was supposed to have left only temporarily, to judge from the number of visits made by match-makers during the past weeks, it would not be very long before she was getting married. The Garden's little society was breaking up.

‘Oh well,' he thought, ‘no good fretting about it now. I'll go and enjoy Dai-yu's company for a while; and after that, I've still got Aroma to go back to. It looks as if we three will soon be the only ones left.'

In that philosophical frame of mind he went back to the Naiad's House; but Dai-yu had still not returned. Just as he was wondering where else he could go, a maid from Lady Wang's apartment came up to him with a message from his mother.

‘The Master's back now and wants to see you. He says he's got a good subject for a poem and you are to come at once.'

Bao-yu was obliged to accompany the girl to his mother's apartment; but by the time he got there, his father had already gone. Lady Wang ordered some of her women to accompany him to his father's study outside. He found Jia Zheng discussing the highlights of the chrysanthemum-viewing party with his literary gentlemen.

‘Shortly before the gathering broke up,' he was telling them, ‘there was some discussion about an episode from the history of the last dynasty. It was a story in which the romantic, the edifying, the heroic and the pathetic were all exemplified – indeed, one of the most remarkable, stories I have ever heard. Everyone present agreed that it deserved a poem to commemorate it.'

‘Pray tell us the story,' said the literary gentlemen, intrigued.

‘It seems that there was a member of the Imperial clan called Prince Heng,' Jia Zheng began, ‘who had gone out to become Military Governor of Qing-zhou. As well as being a fanatically keen soldier, the Prince was inordinately fond of female company, and in the free time left over from his official duties, found a way of combining these two interests by recruiting a large number of beautiful young women whom he had trained in military arts. Every day these young women would be made to engage in mock combat and other warlike exercises for the Prince's entertainment. The most beautiful and also the most militarily accomplished of these young women was a certain Miss Lin, who, because she was the fourth daughter in her family, was known by the name of “Fourth Sister Lin”. Prince Heng thought so highly of her that he gave her a colonelcy and put her in command of the whole female troop. From then on he took to calling her “Colonel Winsome” or “the Winsome Colonel”.'

‘How priceless!' exclaimed the literary gentlemen rapturously. ‘“The
Winsome
Colonel”! What a marvellous combination! Surely this Prince Heng must have been one of the most eccentrically romantic persons the world has known?'

‘One could certainly call him that,' said Jia Zheng. ‘But there is stranger still to follow.'

‘Stranger still?' said the literary gentlemen with surprise. ‘Then this must be a very strange tale indeed.'

‘In the second year of his governorship,' said Jia Zheng, ‘a horde of bandits, latter-day descendants of the Yellow Turbans and Red Eyebrows of the Han period, swept over the whole of Shantung Province, looting and pillaging as they went. The Prince, scorning to mobilize fully against an enemy whom he regarded as a mere rabblement of sheep and curs, took the field against them himself at the head of only a light force of cavalry. But the rebel leadership, by an unexpected combination of cunning and low trickery, defeated him in two successive engagements. In the second of these the Prince himself died fighting.

‘In Qing-zhou the civil and military authorities were in a panic.

‘“What could you or I hope to do when the Prince himself has failed?” they asked each other, and began to make plans for yielding up the city to the rebels.

‘But Fourth Sister Lin's reaction to the grim news was to gather her fellow-officers together and address them as follows:

‘“Our beloved Prince's goodness to us was such that we could never have repaid even a small fraction of it as long as we lived. Now that he has laid down his life for his country, I feel that we in turn ought to lay our lives down for him. Those who feel as I do, follow me. Those who do not are free to leave now, while there is time.”

‘“We will follow you!” the girls cried with a single voice; and that night, under the cover of darkness, they rode out from the walls of Qing-zhou into the midst of the rebel camp. At first, because the rebels were unprepared, they succeeded in killing and decapitating several of their leaders; but it was not long before those in the camp realized that the raiders were a party of women who could easily be overcome if offered determined resistance. Seizing their weapons and rallying themselves together, they fell upon Fourth Sister Lin and her band with such ferocity that soon the girls' heroic
vow to die for their Prince was fulfilled, for not a single one of them was left alive.

‘The Emperor and the entire Court were deeply affected when news of this was brought to them. It is to be assumed that a suitable person was then appointed to command operations against the rebels and that the rebel horde melted away at the first appearance of the Imperial forces – we are not concerned with that. But what of Fourth Sister Lin, gentlemen? Do you not find her an admirable person?'

‘Admirable indeed!' said the literary gentlemen. ‘And what a marvellous subject for a poem! We must all of us try to make one up about her.'

One of their number took a writing-brush and inkstone and wrote down the story almost exactly as Jia Zheng had told it, slightly modifying it here and there in the interest of style, to serve as a short preface for their poem. When he had finished it, he handed it to Jia Zheng for his approval.

‘Yes, that seems to me exactly as it should be,' said Jia Zheng after glancing briefly through it. ‘It was a preface rather like this one that started off the discussion at our gathering. An Imperial directive was received at the Department yesterday asking for a search to be made in the records of this and the preceding dynasty for hitherto neglected instances of outstanding merit deserving some posthumous recognition. No class of persons was to be excluded: monks, runs, beggars, women and girls – all were eligible. Wherever exceptional merit could be established, a brief account of it was to be forwarded to the Board of Rites for inclusion in the list of recommendations. The preface they were discussing at our gathering was a copy of the account sent in by our Department to the Board. It was reading that preface that gave those present the idea that they should write a “Winsome Colonel” poem in commemoration of Fourth Sister Lin's heroic loyalty.'