Ma Wei Slope

PART THREE

As when the players, masked and posturing, have reached a climax in their play by death, disaster or incongruity, and the main agents of this climax leave the stage to a subsidiary character whose outpourings of verse serve to sooth the tried nerves of the audience, so then the sweet succession of the season brought relief to the family of Peng. The millet was garnered, the granary floors stood deep once more in their coloured grain, and the activities which lead directly to the hoped and following spring engaged the minds as well as the bodies of those who had witnessed the passage of an event.

The men of An Lu-shan passed in pursuit, taking with them nothing but more grain in little bags at their saddle-bows. Returning messengers brought tales of the ever further retreat into Shu in the west, and ever continuing pursuit by the men of An Lu-shan. He, report had it, filled the court at Chang-an with tall Northerners from his own province and Borderers from the deep, cold hills of the North. Rumour had it, too, that his mind was not wholly concerned with the pursuit and destruction of that Emperor whose throne he now held, but that the usurper troubled himself greatly with the fate of that companion of his youth who had (so it was reported) fled with the bright Emperor towards the unprobeable and misty valleys where magic seemed so much more likely than in the prosaic and cultivated plains around the old capital city.

It was on the eighteenth day of the seventh moon that the Emperor and his party reached Cheng-tu, Ah Lai, who had been used hitherto only to the inadequate organisation of a poet’s household, was immediately astonished at the manner in which efficiency overrode expected fatigue and the various members of the party were accommodated in houses, while the soldiery tested further the capacity of the barracks.

For several days, it appeared, there would be no particular need for his services, and when he had largely exhausted the pleasure of acquainting himself with the geography of Cheng-tu, he began to realise why officials in general kept bright the armoury of their poetic imagination and often, towards the fall of the sun, would relax in putting on paper their impressions of the day that had gone.

But when he had collected paper and brush and prepared his ink, he found that his creative faculties were under a cloud which he could not explain. Rhymes were tardy, words seemed to lack by a narrow margin that precision which is any poet’s aim, and even the titles which he had managed to project did not comfortably fit any poem which he was likely to write. Images, indeed, arrived, but they were images with loose edges, images not only unrelated to each other and individually incapable of extension into a poem, but images whose reality, even whose possibility, seemed outside normal experience.

He was, therefore, grateful for the interruption when, at the hour of the goat (an unheard-of time for an audience) he was summoned to the Governor’s yamen, where the Bright Emperor had been installed with a poor semblance of the grandeur which he had left at Chang-an. Yet even here formality overlaid necessity, and when Ah Lai had come past the armed, statuesque guards at the gates, to the entrance of the Great Hall, he found there all the unexpressed official hindrances and supercilious condescensions which are a part of any court, however rural—hindrances to which Ah Lai had not yet had time to become accustomed.

Nevertheless he waved his written authority under the noses of the guards and ushers and finally heard the great doors close behind him. The sun was halfway down: a shaft from the windows above the door cut across to the rectangular wall facing him, hanging in the air a beam of dancing motes whose end seemed to rest on the patch of brilliant light head-high in the contrasting darkness of the empty wall before him.

Han Im’s remembered voice said: “Turn to your right, walk ten paces and face to the North.” The voice seemed to come from the left, where Ah Lai knew that the Emperor would sit, as Emperors had always sat, their backs to the high lands of the border tribes, their faces to the warmer country of the black-haired people of the hundred surnames.

When Ah Lai had obediently done this, he saw that he was not alone, for beside him, cross-legged on the tiled floor, a Taoist priest sat. The long, coarse pin through his untidy hair, and the shapeless, brown robes of his order seemed in strange, undeliberate contrast with the shining buckles and glinting weapons of the guards, with the tall sacrificial tripods against the Eastern wall, and the four peacock-feather screens which moved, ever so slightly, in front of the throne before him. Only the base of the throne was visible: Ah Lai subconsciously wondered how such a throne had been found here in Cheng-tu, where no Emperor or king had sat since the dim days of the later Han dynasty. The peacock-feather screens seemed to have been brought from some dusty store: they bore no resemblance to the twice seventy-eight which, at Chang-an, drew colours from the air in a shifting spectrum of green and blue.

Nobody spoke. The bearers of the four fans lowered them towards the door. The Emperor was coming. Ah Lai, amused, saw the moving feet below the fans. Then the four fans were lifted and their bearers returned to their places by the two walls. The Emperor sat, revealed, upon his throne. A faint point of light played on the gold nail-covers of his left hand. The rest, seen through the sunbeam across the hall, was dark, was magnificence not visible. The Emperor spoke, broodingly.

“We have published an edict, recognising the poverty of Our virtue, regretting the ills of Our country, admitting that Our choice of officers was not wise, authorising the Heir to the Throne to undertake attacks upon Our enemies, and proclaiming an amnesty for prisoners. Our sorrow is great.”

Again there was silence: the motes danced, unheeding, in the sunbeam.

Han Im, near the throne, suddenly remembered his duty and intoned: “The Emperor has spoken.”

Then the priest, still sitting cross-legged, said: “To state the truth, when the truth is plain, is riot enough. To favour the Way of Tao, to transcribe in a new edition the works of our Master and to publish a commentary on the Classic of Filial Piety, are not enough. To seek for the Elixir of Life is not enough, though you have done all these things. It is the heart which matters.”

Ah Lai felt that he was more a spectator than ever in his life. Two thoughts strove for mastery in the darkened hall: he watched their strife.

The Emperor went on: “It is easy to silence for ever voices such as that.”

The priest replied: “The voice may be silenced, but the truth remains.”

Suddenly, horribly, laughter came from the Emperor. He cried in a loud voice: “We simulate here all. Our old ceremony, and a priest sits cross-legged, listening without being impressed. Should We be happier, were We that priest?” Again he laughed. “We do not dare, because We dare not understand. We do not understand, because We dare not dare.”

Han Im said: “Sorrow rides your Majesty hard.”

The Emperor replied: “It is not sorrow. It is frustration. Here We must plan, and issue edicts and send messengers. There, outside this hall, the people of the hundred surnames suffer. Of what avail is it to them that We should hold Our throne?”

The priest said: “You trust no one.”

The Bright Emperor answered: “We trust no one. Whom should We trust?”

Han Im reminded him: “Sire, there is the matter of the safety of the city of Sui-yang. Your Majesty was considering it.”

Irritably, the Emperor said: “Well? Must I sorrow and plan together?”

Then the priest rose to his feet. He appeared tall in the gloom. He said: “To put ‘I’ for ‘We’ is a beginning. Whom did you wish to send to Sui-yang?”

“What is it like not to fear me?” the Emperor asked.

The priest replied: “It is like listening to a sick child. Yet even Confucius told us that if we hear the Way of Tao in the morning, it matters little if we should die at night. Perhaps he did not mean the Way of Tao, but his own Way. But you should not fear death, you of all men, for to you above all others is granted the continuity of family, of succession, of a tended tomb. We are they whom history passes by.”

Han Im observed again: “Sui-yang, Your Majesty?”

“Tell the boy,” the Emperor answered.

Han Im said: “His Imperial Majesty has decreed that to you, Ah Lai, should be given the honour of a mission. Instructions and authority are written here, on this paper. Guard them with your life.”

Ah Lai stepped forward and walked up the interminable floor. In front of the throne he kotowed. But before his forehead had reached the floor for the second time, the Emperor said with a kindly note in his voice: “Stop. Rise. You helped me once. Do not imagine that I forget so easily.”

The priest had moved up noiselessly beside Ah Lai.

“Does the lad desire to undertake this mission?” he asked. “Why did he help you before? Was it for your own sake, or for another’s? Do not in one breath thank him and ask for more favours. He may not want to go on this mission.”

Han Im asked, scandalised: “Shall he be removed?”

The Emperor shook his head. A gem in his headdress turned from green to red, then apricot, as he moved. “The priest is right,” he said. “I talk much of the sorrow of my people, but I have not yet learned to consider their desires. I am old to learn. Boy, do you wish to do me this service?”

Ah Lai answered: “If I must be honest, as this priest is honesty I must say that, when I served before in taking the Lady Yang to Ma Wei with General Tung’s orders for the reception of his troops, I did so because I wanted adventure. Further, there was a girl who was better left alone for a space. So I went to Ma Wei. But now to travel to Sui-yang, for whatever cause, seems to be but to place a greater distance between myself and this girl.”

Han Im said: “She would wish you to go. Further, if you write a letter, it can be carried by another, through the lines of the enemy. You must serve your Emperor.”

The priest said: “Must? All the ills of the world lie in that word. Even Confucius said he would have no ‘must’ in his ideal State.”

The Emperor rose to his feet, impatiently waving aside the bearers of the fans. “The whole of my Empire is bathed in blood because men give orders and other men obey them,” he cried. “And now the loyalty of Sui-yang is to stand as a bastion against the enemy’s forces, and again there will be blood everywhere. I will issue no more orders. Han Im, come.”

The priest and Ah Lai were left alone in the great hall. The fan-bearers vanished through another door. The sunbeam was more level now, but the motes still danced.

Ah Lai said: “I thought that to oppose the Bright Emperor, or even to query an order, was to die. But you are not dead. I am not dead. Life is strange now. Before, we knew what to expect.”

The priest replied: “He is whimsical. Also he is sad because of the Lady Yang, whose family have ruined the State, if ever there were any so simple first cause. Come, let us go to your lodgings. Read the orders which you were given. Maybe they fit with your own desires. It is always easier to take the line of least resistance.”

Later, when Ah Lai had read the Emperor’s orders in his room, he said to the priest: “I should wish to go to Sui-yang. But . . .”

The priest told him: “If you have read your histories as I expect you to have done, you will have sensed that when any such great events as these thrust themselves on man’s consciousness, he says with convinced optimism: ‘Now, after this, it is impossible for anything to be ever again the same. We start afresh from now. No longer shall we make the same mistakes, for we are wiser.’ And then he goes out and marries a wife or buys a horse or writes a poem, just as he would have done had no great events come to hinder him.”

Ah Lai replied: “Yes, it is as you say. But you have spoken of commonplace actions which we men do in spite of the great events which pass over our heads. I, too, am concerned with those commonplace actions, or at least with one of them, for in the stress of the Emperor’s service I have left behind me in the Capital (or, rather, near it) a girl for whom I have an affection.”

The priest said: “Fevers and the worship of women come upon us unawares, and even wise men cannot avoid them.”

Ah Lai went on: “I saw her first when she was full of the sorrow which overtakes a girl when she has known for the first time what it is to be taken by a man. He was an old man, and she found this made her unhappy. Also, she did not love him. So she ran away, and it was then that I found her. She would not listen to what I had to say to her, and I did not find that unreasonable, for her mind was full of the picture of the old man, so that all her thoughts were coloured by him, and I feared that she had lost more than her maidenhead. Nevertheless, I knew that I loved her, and I think that she is not unmoved by the thought of me. Then I was compelled to come on here, in the Emperor’s train, and had, so, to leave her with hardly a farewell. I do not know what has happened to her: I do not know if sorrow has passed, nor if she would now listen to me. So I proposed to write a poem for her, so that she might know what I feel. And how am I to send this poem to her? I am to go to the key city of Sui-yang, to gain first-hand impressions for the Emperor of the possibility of defending it. The Emperor does not trust the judgment of military men in military matters, for he believes them to be prejudiced. So he sends me, a civilian, to dig for truth. Nevertheless, if I go to Sui-yang, I cannot take letters myself to Chang-an. Besides, the rebels are there, as Han Im said, and I could not pass through their lines to her.”

The priest said: “Then that difficulty is easily settled, for I can carry your letters for you. A priest can pass through battling armies unnoticed. It is true that I had not contemplated going anywhere near Chang-an, but if I have a duty at all it may be done there as well as here. You have friends in Chang-an?”

“I know only of two girls,” Ah Lai answered. “Their names are Honeysuckle and Clear Rain, and anyone in Chang-an will help you to find them. You mean that you would carry my letter to Chang-an and these girls could take it further? But surely I am relying too greatly on the kindnesses of others—on your kindness and the kindness of these girls. I know only one of them at all well, and that was the accident of a summer night.”

The priest replied: “I will take your letter. You may rest assured that I shall persuade the girls to deliver it. Now you need talk no further. Rest to-day. Write your letters. I shall come to see you early to-morrow morning, before I go, by routes which you need not know, back to the Two Capitals.”

Ah Lai sighed with relief to see how circumstances again bent themselves towards him, bowed to the departing priest, and drew writing materials towards him. With the beginnings of an appetite, he began to set words in order for a poem which should show Winter Cherry how he still felt.

It was then, three months later, between the period called Cold Dew and the period when Hoar Frost Descends, at the hour of the dog. Peng Yeh and Father Peng sat before a small table. The remains of the evening meal had been removed. A yard further from the table the Lady of the Tapestry sat, so that she might be referred to, instructed and even, perhaps, consulted in the council-of-family which Peng Yeh purposed. A lamp stood on the table: two rushlights on the walls made the rest of the room dark.

Peng Yeh said: “It is time for me to consider the circumstances of our eldest daughter. I have thought on this matter and come to a conclusion. I wish, my father, to hear from you how this conclusion appears to you. It will then be for us to instruct my wife accordingly.”

The Lady of the Tapestry did not speak. She sniffed just audibly enough for her men folk to hear her. Neither gave a sign of having heard.

Father Peng said: “When I was your age, I consulted my father before coming to conclusions. But you may be right. Let me hear your conclusions and the considerations which led up to them.”

“The girl is no longer in the fullest sense my daughter,” Peng Yeh said. “When a girl has passed out over the family threshold, whether it be to marriage with some suitable young man who has been chosen for her, or to the more honourable state of a girl in the Emperor’s palace, she has ceased to be, fully, a daughter. She no longer ties a red cord round her plaited hair. Her clothing and feeding are at another’s charge, The father does not still have to be opening his coffers for the expenses which girl-children bring with them.”

Father Peng agreed: “It is as you say. But if the husband dies in poverty, the girl comes back.”

“Not of right, but only of compassion,” Peng Yeh returned.

His wife murmured, tentatively: “If . . .”

They both turned to her.

She continued: “If the husband is dead and there is no money after paying for his burial, it would be folly for the wife to go her husband’s family, since they would certainly attribute his death to her neglect, or to some circumstance which would make her visit to their roof (for more than a very brief time) into a source of recurrent sorrows and memories of the son which they had lost. No, it is in her own father’s house that she should find refuge.” Then she added: “She should find refuge there even if she is so changed that only her own mother recognises her.”

Father Peng observed: “Since her husband is not dead, and since I can hardly imagine that the Emperor, constrained as he is by the presence of a usurper on the throne, would again welcome my insignificant grand-daughter into a household which must be in a difficult situation . . .”

Peng Yeh smiled. “We have, indeed, been discussing something which was beside the point,” he said. “But the affair is unprecedented. The girl is neither married nor unmarried. I considered this as soon as you told me of her secret coming, and decided that the balance lay on the side of her being unmarried. I therefore, since we are by now used to doing without her, looked round for a suitable match—a family to whom I might send the official go-between with the confidence born of social equality.”

The Lady of the Tapestry stirred uneasily. Then, taking courage, she said: “The girl seems happy here. She is useful, and does not constitute a drain on our resources. Her fingers are nimble with needle and loom. After all that she has been through, would it not be possible to leave her here a little longer?”

Father Peng asked: “What does the girl herself say?”

They both stared at him in surprise.

Peng Yeh cried: “But surely you do not expect me to ask my own daughter about her future? No one ever heard of such a thing. To consult her would be to rock the foundations of the Empire. Why, even the Master . . .”

Father Peng interrupted, a little testily: “What Empire? It seems a little unsteady already. And as to the Master, though I have spent a lifetime reading his works and trying to live them, I have found no instruction of his which would urge you to arrange the girl’s future with a view only to your own convenience. The good man, you will remember, thinks first of others, then of himself. I trust that you have done nothing definite in the matter of the go-between?”

“I have not yet sent the go-between to the Ching family,” Pen Yeh replied.

The Lady of the Tapestry forgot herself enough to interrupt without invitation. “The Chings!” she cried. “Why, I thought that everyone knew that the Chings depended for their revenue on the silk imports from the district of Shu, and that the present fighting has cut that revenue down so far that the Chings have had to borrow money. I do not think . . .”

Peng Yeh, in his turn, interrupted. “I did not desire your opinion of the Chings,” he said. “Money is not everything. Birth . . .”

Father Peng suggested: “Let us hear the girl. We need not be influenced by what she says.”

“Then why ask her?” Peng Yeh complained. “But it would be best to settle this matter, in whatever way, speedily. My wife, you will fetch our daughter.”

The Lady of the Tapestry rose obediently to her feet and went out of the room.

Peng Yeh began: “Really . . .”

Father Peng raised a restraining hand. He said: “Remember the Masters dictum that we should respect our juniors until, in age, they are no longer respectable.”

Then they both sat silently until the Lady of the Tapestry returned, bringing Winter Cherry with her. The girl remained standing: the Lady of the Tapestry took her seat again.

Peng Yeh began: “You should have greeted us formally, for you can see that it is a formal meeting.”

She replied: “I am sorry that I failed in my duty.”

Father Peng murmured: “To have faults and fail to correct them—that is indeed having faults.”

Winter Cherry kotowed.

Peng Yeh said: “I am your father. I wish to hear what you have to say about a matter which concerns you.”

Winter Cherry replied: “You know, my father, what is best. It is not for me to have any opinions . . .”

Father Peng interrupted again: “Girl, it is of no avail to behave as you think we expect you to behave. If a girl leaves her home and goes to the Capital—if she has the honour of the Emperor’s presence—if her days are full of glitter and poetry, of rich food and unaccustomed manners—it is not possible for her to return to her parents and say ‘I have no opinions’.”

She answered: “Sir, I did not say that. I said that it was not for me to have opinions.”

Peng Yeh cried: “Why quibble about words?”

The Lady of the Tapestry observed under her breath: “Because words have meanings.”

Old Father Peng’s keen ears heard her voice and divined her meaning. He said, nodding: “Yes. The Master told us that if language is lucid, that is enough, and the meanings of words are part of the lucidity of the language which uses them. Why, I wrote a poem about it myself, this morning.” He pulled a sliver of paper from his sleeve. “Listen.

It is not in my usual style, I know. Just an idea while I was sitting with the late sunlight on my knee. A memory from before you were born. But it illustrates my meaning.”

Winter Cherry exclaimed: “So you know, too?”

Father Peng replied: “It is more difficult not to know, if one has lived at all. You young ones are apt to regard the aged as a dried fruit-peel. The peel was not always dry. Now, tell us, girl, what you want done about yourself. Let there be an end of this having no opinions. Why, even your mother was not deceived.”

“Even?” said the Lady of the Tapestry.

Peng Yeh laughed.

“When my father takes charge of a conversation,” he said, “everything turns upside down, like the guests in Li Po’s poem about the Porcelain Pavilion.”

Winter Cherry said: “I ran away, after I had been sent for to the Emperor. He was asleep, and I went to the Pavilion because Li Po had been kind to me when he was drunk, earlier, in the low-sunned garden by the Aloe Pavilion.”

Her father and mother clicked their tongues. Father Peng smiled and rang a little bell on the table. To the servant who came he said: “Wine.”

They all waited until this had been brought. Father Peng turned the little silver cup in his hand.

“It is a dissolver of doubts,” he said. “Drink, all of you. And girl, fetch a porcelain stool and sit down with us. Daughter-in-law, draw up your seat. Son, relax that look of discipline. Now, drink!”

In a little while they were all talking freely, and Winter Cherry had told her story.

“And when he was about to drive away,” she finished, “he told me that I was as free as if I had never left my parents’ roof. But I did not like to tell you this, my father.”

Father Peng said: “Freer, for you are no longer ignorant, but must be consulted. Of course the best thing would be for you to go into a nunnery, but you might not like that.” He sipped a fresh cup. “Son, you can give up your ideas for her future. Let her stay here, as if she had not gone. Then things will settle themselves—probably in a way which you would not have foreseen.”

He rose to his feet and set down an empty cup. The others, rising, waited for Father Peng to speak further, but he nodded, tucked his poem carefully inside his sleeve, and went to his own room.

Peng Yeh, with a motion of helplessness, went out too.

The Lady of the Tapestry said: “I thought your father’s plan might prove impracticable. Your grandfather thought so, too, when I told him yesterday. You left your embroidery in my room this morning. Some of the stitches will have to come out. I will show you.”

They went out together.

The four empty wine-cups stood on the table.

Peng Chan-mu leaned against the doorpost of the women’s room, watching his three sisters working. His youngest sister, Mooi-tsai, compared his stocky, robust figure, hardened by toil and toughened by weather, with the remembered slighter build of Ah Lai, who seemed to have in his appearance a little of his uncle’s poetry, while her brother undoubtedly suggested something much more earthy.

Chan-mu said: “Still pretending to work? It seems that you three girls recognise the need for justifying your existence.”

Peng Mei answered: “At least, we work. You stand against the door-post as if you were afraid that it would fall down.”

Mooi-tsai said scornfully: “He is thinking. That is hard work—for my brother. That is why he has to have support for his back.”

“Support for my back!” Chan-mu cried with scorn equal to hers. “Indeed, you, who sit here softly, making soft things for posterity, are qualified to talk of supports for the back! So I, labouring in the fields day in and day out, am a weakling, while that ornamental poet’s nephew who was here, who never spent his strength in honest toil, is laudable—is to be held up as an example to us, just because our eldest sister has learned what I can only call a palace attitude.”

Mooi-tsai leaped to her feet, letting her embroidery fall, and sprang towards him. He raised his foot and pushed her with it, not too gently, in the stomach. She went backwards, tripped and fell on her back.

“Don’t you adopt the palace attitude, too,” he laughed. Then Mooi-tsai got up again in a temper, and her two sisters joined her in the attack. Chan-mu pushed a stool in front of them, slipped through the door and went out, singing.

Mei said: “He is ill-bred. He learns his manners from the men on the farm.”

Winter Cherry added: “And the animals.”

Mooi-tsai asked: “What did he mean by the words ‘palace attitude’? I did not understand. And when I fell on my back he said it again. Did he mean anything?”

“Nothing that you ought to understand,” Winter Cherry told her. “Come—we must put the room in order again before our mother sees it. Did he hurt you when he pushed you with his foot?”

Mooi-tsai shook her head and joined in tidying up. She was still puzzling over her brother’s words, and decided to ask her mother at the earliest opportunity what they meant.

In Chang-an, towards the far end of East Street, past the food-shops and silk-cutters’ establishments which served their immediate needs, the three Blue Houses stood side by side separated only by narrow passages leading to gardens and stabling behind them. Mother Feng ruled (as far as she was allowed) over the middle house of the three. On a clear morning just after the period when Hoar Frost Descends, Honeysuckle could see from their high room clear over the low buildings at the opposite side of the street, away to distant hills about which she sometimes made poetry which she never wrote down.

Just now, Mother Feng’s form broke the view, and Clear Rain, waking lazily, heard Honeysuckle saying: “If you will allow me to see my favourite view of the hills as well as yourself, Mother Feng, I shall do my best to listen carefully to what you have to say.”

Mother Feng cleared her throat, as if at an audience, and then, irritated that she should have done so, replied: “I brought you the message because the priest who brought it gave me money to take it to you personally. Money is not so easy to come by, these days, where rebels take for nothing what men used to pay for in good, bright silver.”

Honeysuckle asked: “What was the message?”

Mother Feng replied: “That, he would only give you himself.”

Clear Rain laughed. “Then he has paid you for nothing,” she said. “Tell the priest to come to us. Is he a follower of The Way, or merely a follower of Fo?”

“I do not know,” Mother Feng answered. “I shall give him your message. Then you can ask him yourself. But priests do not wash much, and you may not enjoy it. I . . .”

“Let him come,” Honeysuckle broke in. “He can always go again.”

Mother Feng went out.

When the priest came, they saw at once that he was a follower of Lao Tze, whose Way has puzzled some and been an excuse to many. He sat down on the floor without speaking. His hair was carelessly wound round on the top of his head and stuck through with a long wooden pin. Bright, deep eyes shone in a lean, lined face: his fingers were long and dark.

The two girls looked at him in silence.

“With regard to women,” the priest said, looking straight in front of him, “I follow the philosopher Chuang-Tzu.”

Honeysuckle observed brightly: “That was, I suppose, entirely due to your mother.”

The priest’s eyes opened wide with joy, and he said: “Here is one after my own heart! I speak to her of philosophy and she turns it to a pedigree. If I had given her a pedigree, would she have become philosophical?”

Clear Rain rose to her feet and stretched herself lazily.

“Other men,” she said, “bring rich presents in return for the privilege of listening to us. One can only conclude, therefore, that what we say is valuable. Yet here you are enjoying it without making a return.”

The priest replied: “Chuang-Tzu, waking after a dream in which he thought himself a butterfly, wondered whether his dream were the reality and he the dream. So fickle and evanescent are thoughts, dreams, and also the words with which these dreams are shared. And, if words be dreams, then it is three stanzas of dreams that I have brought with me. These dreams were written by a young man who paid me money to deliver them, apparently thinking them worth this outlay. But he gave me no other money with which I might have arranged for the further transport of these words to the lady to whom they were addressed. This places me in a quandary, and a quandary is not only bad for the digestion, but upsetting for the soul. You must solve it yourselves.”

Honeysuckle replied: “You spoke of a young lady to whom your dreams were addressed. Unless you tell us the name of this lady and produce the dreams of which you spoke, then indeed we shall be wagging our tails in the mud, like the tortoise that disliked responsibility.”

Clear Rain corrected her: “Tail. There was but one tortoise.”

The priest said: “I see that you both know the Books, and will no longer conceal from you that the name of the lady’s family is Peng, and her given name is Winter Cherry. Here are the deceptive lines.”

He took from his sleeve a crumpled piece of paper and gave it to Honeysuckle. Then he rose to his feet and said: “To speak words at parting is a weak confession.”

As he was going out, Clear Rain called after him: “Yet you have spoken them. Besides, may we know your name?”

He replied: “I am called the Guardian of the Hidden Spring,” and went out at last.

Honeysuckle opened the paper.

Ah Lai had written:

Clear Rain commented: “Is this not more your affair than mine, sister? After all, I hardly saw the boy when I was there.”

“And I,” Honeysuckle replied, turning the paper over, “am not, it seems, the object of this exceedingly erudite poem, for it is addressed to the girl Winter Cherry, whom I last saw wearing her short hair without particular distinction. Listen to this.”

She read:

Clear Rain sniffed: “A gardener’s catalogue of hum-drum events, bereft of unexpected charm.”

Honeysuckle replied: “Apart from the purely instructive part, it seems promising. From what I know of him, that young man will have some difficulty in living up to his professions. From what I know of him, his backwardness in deeds may prove hard to forgive, when he writes words like these. But he is a pleasant youth, and no doubt practice will narrow down the space betwixt promise and performance.”

“You ought to know,” Clear Rain answered, so that Honeysuckle threw the nearest thing at her. “I suppose that you want to experience again the delights of stealing a man.”

Honeysuckle said: “She lost nothing which time cannot replace. Yes: I think you and I might go to Ma Wei. It will be a change from this, whatever Mother Feng may think.”

They set to planning how they might have their journey at another’s expense, and finally sent the maid Cinnamon with a letter to the Palace.

When Cinnamon came back with her answer, she told Clear Rain: “I had difficulty in finding An Ching-hsu, but one of his servants says that his master will call on you as soon as he can get away from the girls he is with now.”

Honeysuckle laughed: “So we break our rule and receive men from the very beds of other girls! Well, let us hope that it will be worth it. As the son of An Lu-shan, he should be able to arrange our visit to the farm. We shall see.”

Clear Rain said: “I hear that this An Ching-hsu is not in the least like his father. That is all to the good, for tall Northerners are apt to be exhausting.”

They spent the next hour or so preparing for the visit of An Ching-hsu. Cinnamon was sent to buy wine. No one took any notice of Mother Feng’s protests about taking cast-offs from the house next door.

When, finally, An Ching-hsu came, he turned out to be a short, merry man with fat enough to keep out the winter and energy enough to keep warm. He was pleased at the invitation, and asked how the two girls had heard of him.

Honeysuckle said: “It is difficult not to hear of you. Now that the extravagance of the late Emperor and his mistress are no longer discussed at every street corner, we poor women have time to open our ears to other, more important things. Is it true that you knew Yang Kuei-fei?”

An Ching-hsu smiled, and although his smile seemed to be one of pleasure at the question, both girls sensed more behind it. He said: “My father, An Lu-shan, knew her, nearly ten years ago. He hated her cousin, Yang Kuo-chung, but I think he still loved her. He is sad that his action led to her death.”

Clear Rain said: “This is a depressing subject to speak of on a visit. I will pour the wine.”

Honeysuckle agreed: “It would be better to forget sorrow in the kindly essence of the earth. Sister, sing us one of your songs when you have served the wine.”

Clear Rain filled up the cups. Then she took her lute and sang:

An Ching-hsu said: “That is a song of sadness. I thought that you were going to sing a cheerful song.”

Honeysuckle sang without music:

An Ching-hsu said: “That song is as sad as the other. Why do you both play on the strings of my heart?”

Honeysuckle said to Clear Rain: “It would be wise for you to go and see about that roll of flowered silk. We cannot expect the shopkeeper to save it for us to the detriment of his other customers’ interests. You could take Cinnamon with you.” When Clear Rain and Cinnamon had gone, Honeysuckle poured out more wine for An Ching-hsu, and shared his cup. The wine (for it was old) soon had the desired effect on him, and Honeysuckle, who knew well that from sorrow to joy is a surer key than from joy to sorrow, sang him the Ballad of Mu-lan. She knew that this song of a girl who takes her father’s place in the army and hides from all the soldiers the fact that pleasure greater than mere camp-fire stories is theirs for the ready taking, excites a man to emulation and unwisdom.

A little later she asked: “And your father was very fond of the Lady Yang? I wonder that he does not go to see how she died. If the stories are true, he would like to know: if they are untrue, he would like to know. The answer is at Ma Wei.”

An replied: “He has been thinking of going, but always some official business comes between him and his purpose. You know, I think, how busy he has been persuading the neighbourhood that he brings peace to his subjects?”

Honeysuckle said: “Maybe. But a man who has a question eating at his heart like a rat at a sack of grain is in poor case to convince other people of his one-heartedness. Let him go to Ma Wei and find out. Could you not go with him? We know the daughter of the man on whose estate she stayed: she would tell us more than she would tell to a stranger. Let us all go: we can pretend that it is a holiday in the old days, when all was peace and men thought of other things than killing each other. Now, laugh! For you are nicer when you laugh.”

“Little fool!” he answered, not untenderly. “Why do you want to go to Ma Wei? Well, it does not matter why—I will try to get my father to take us all. The change from ruling suspicious people will do his health good. No—come back here. I know as many tricks as you do. Now . . .”

Clear Rain, driving, shook the horses’ reins free and turned to Honeysuckle.

“I have always wanted to drive a carriage with silver rein tips,” she said. “It is indeed different from the last time we came in this direction. Do you remember?”

They were crossing the Wei, after having passed the slope of Beautiful Waters.

Honeysuckle said, pointing to the bridge: “The Emperor’s troops broke down this bridge when they retreated, although the Emperor had not wanted them to do so lest the people from Chang-an should not be able to escape from the hands of the rebels.”

Clear Rain answered: “I know. But it is mended now, so what does it matter?”

Honeysuckle said: “Yes. It does not matter. But the greater comfort in which we travel now is only natural. In Spring the leaves are a pleasant green, as they will be soon, for it is the fifth day of the first moon. In Autumn the leaves are russet. So, if you travel the same road as a fleeing Emperor (although we did not know so at the time) you cannot expect greater comfort than that of hired carrying-chairs, whereas now, in the proximate wake of one who feels himself a new fledged Spring-Emperor, we endure the not very marked discomfort of one of his own carriages, drawn by two excellent Government horses. I have never before been so comfortably near the three flowers branded on the horse’s rump, though I remember when I was a child being snatched by my careful nurse from a too close inspection of what might have been those very three flowers.”

Clear Rain replied: “Well if you will play the dog’s game . . .”

Ahead of them, the two other carriages rolled steadily along the level road, escorts on each side. The nearer of the two held An Ching-hsu’s recognisable plumpness: in the further, a tall burly figure, An Lu-shan himself, held the reins gathered in his left hand.

“I want to wave something,” Clear Rain said, “but my hands are too busy.” She looked down at Honeysuckle. “Is it not like the days when we were young? Or perhaps you cannot remember that, you who are always planning. I did not mean that.”

Honeysuckle said: “And yet my heart is not happy. Everything is happening as we wanted it to happen; we are being taken at no cost to the place to which we wished to go, by the men whom we fished to take us, and yet my heart is not happy. I do not know why this should be.”

Clear Rain answered: “You have been eating something, and your stomach does not like the jolting. For me it is easier to be happy, for if you stand up as I am doing, with the wind in your hair and your knees a little bent, your stomach does not feel anything. Besides, I did not eat as much as you did before I started.”

Honeysuckle said: “You are quite wrong about the food. No, it is my heart that is sad, and since a heart between two doors is the character for sadness, I can only think that this journey, with its departure from our house and its departure from the finer rules of behaviour, is responsible for my mood. What is there for me to lay at the door of sadness? Money, ease, comfort and pleasant companions—these things should not make me feel as I do feel. Let me drive a little, so that I, too, may feel as if I wanted to wave something other than a funeral cloth.”

They exchanged places and Clear Rain went to sleep. Honeysuckle, standing as Clear Rain had stood, saw the road coming towards them, the latent buds awaiting their particular spring, the small, fleecy clouds ahead in the sky, and a single goose flying south. She was remembering that single geese could carry messages of love tied to their legs, and realised that there was no one to whom she would wish to send a message.

Although she bent her knees a little, she felt more unhappy than she wanted to feel.

At the gates of the estate of Peng Yeh, the escort halted and came together. The three carriages assembled behind the escort. There were the sound of scraping hoofs and the jostling of leather.

An Lu-shan, descending from his carriage, said: “When I am impatient, as now, I am unfilial enough to blame the emotion on my father and my father’s father, for I cannot accustom myself to this intolerable Chinese habit of shutting a door first, in order to open it with courtesy. I am not a Chinese and I cannot think wholly like a Chinese.”

Honeysuckle was conscious that, for a moment, they were all grouped like motionless actors, awaiting the climax of a tragedy. She cried: “I think I hear men behind the gate, about to open it.”

An answered: “I have an almost irresistible desire to break it down. In my country such is the treatment of those who shut doors in my face. And I must learn to do all the things that Chinese do in order to have the door opened—to call, to bribe, to intrigue, to distract the gate-keeper’s attention—it is all too indirect for me. You, my son, could probably manage it without effort—I have often noticed how much more you resemble your mother than you resemble me. Some of my other sons, now, show promise of being tall, brusque men, like their father. If it were not . . .”

He broke off, for the gate opened and Peng Yeh came out towards the group. Peng Yeh’s face was set and stern, and his empty hands twitched at his sides.

An said: “You see! He hates me.”

Peng Yeh asked: “What do you desire?”

An replied: “First, courtesy. That is the cheapest commodity here. Today I come only as a visitor, so we need have no further trouble about titles. My son and these two girls, whom I think you know.”

Clear Rain said: “We poured wine for you when we met last.”

Peng Yeh took no notice of her.

An Ching-hsu came forward. “Let me try,” he suggested. “Sir, we come as friends from distant quarters, and regret exceedingly the disruption which, I fear, our visit brings to your household arrangements. Nevertheless, since we wish to enquire of you and your household about facts which you, and not we, are privy to, I beg of you to allow us a short space of talk.”

Lu-shan said: “A diplomatist, most unlike a son of mine. And yet, he succeeds where force would have failed, for if you break into a man’s house you do not thereby loosen his tongue. You see, he succeeds.”

For Peng Yeh had bowed to An Ching-hsu and began to retire backwards towards his gates. The escort made way for him. The impasse was broken.

An Lu-shan and his son were seated in the Hall of Audience, drinking tea. The two girls found a serving maid to take them to Winter Cherry’s room, and were received with a mixture of formality and affectionate gratitude which was very amusing to Honeysuckle and Clear Rain.

Honeysuckle said: “In her father’s house she behaves like a hostess, but I can see that her hair has still not grown again to its proper length.”

Clear Rain agreed: “No. But she has put it up, which would seem to make her at any rate partially married.”

Winter Cherry replied: “When you have cut your hair off, it is as bad as putting it up. You can never let it down again. But I think it looks better so.”

The two visitors looked at each other. Then Honeysuckle said: “Would you consider it pleasant to have a letter from your haircutter?”

Winter Cherry cried: “My haircutter? Whom do you mean?”

Clear Rain replied: “When we last met you, you told us a tale of having disguised yourself as a boy. In fact, you looked as if you had tried to do so. But of course . . .”

Honeysuckle said: “The letter is from the honourable Li Po’s nephew.” She held it out to Winter Cherry. “Here—take it and hide it in your dress. There is someone at the door.”

Indeed, Peng Chan-mu appeared in a moment. Honeysuckle and Clear Rain rose to their feet and stood waiting. Winter Cherry fetched a porcelain stool from the side of the room and set it for her brother.

“It is not often,” he said as he sat down, “that I find you so well worth visiting.”

The three girls also seated themselves.

“These ladies, whose names are Honeysuckle and Clear Rain,” Winter Cherry told him, “aided me on my way home, and I have no way of showing my gratitude.”

Peng Chan-mu said: “That is a debt which I could willingly settle for you. In fact, I find their presence here more than a slight compensation for our country loneliness.”

Honeysuckle answered: “We are honoured by what your brother says. But no reward is necessary for what we did.”

Then there was the sound of other voices in the passage, and soon An Lu-shan and his son appeared.

Peng Chan-mu cried: “It is not right that you should come to my sister’s room, I am her brother, but you . . .”

Lu-shan put out a hand and took Peng Chan-mu by the shoulder. With no apparent effort he thrust the young man aside, out of the door, saying as he did so: “You seem to forget that I now occupy the Dragon Throne, and for me there is no right and wrong. What I will, is.” He closed the door and turned to the others. “Is this the girl who calls herself Winter Cherry?”

Winter Cherry replied, rising: “That is my name.”

Lu-shan continued: “I desire to hear from your lips, since seemingly you know more than does your father, all the events which occurred between the arrival of the late Emperor’s party and their departure, so far as it concerns the late Lady Yang Kuei-fei.” Then, since they had all bowed at the Emperor’s name, he shouted: “Enough of this foolery, I am now the Emperor. It is to me that you should bow, not to the name and memory of one who threw the Empire away and will soon be taken by my own men. Go, all of you. I will talk with this girl alone.”

When the others had left them, Winter Cherry said: “I am sure that my father has told you all that you could wish to know.”

Lu-shan answered: “No, since he does not know it. Come, there is nothing to be afraid of. Forget for a little while who I am: tell me in your own words the story of what happened here. Now, I know that the Lady Yang came earlier, with some boy or other, and that when the late Emperor arrived he called for her. Go on from there.”

Winter Cherry asked: “But why should I tell you? She is dead, and what she did before she died does not matter to you. Besides . . .”

He broke in: “Tell me what happened; do not ask me why I desire to know. Girl, I have means to make people talk. You would not have thus refused to tell the late Emperor. Now that I am Emperor, you must tell me. I am being very patient. Or, if you need a reason—for women are unreasonable enough to want that—let it suffice that I knew her when I first came to Court. She was kind to me. Is that a reason enough for you?”

She replied, fearing him: “I must take it as a reason. But I do not know how she came to hang herself.”

He cried: “She hanged herself? But they told me she was taken out and ridden down by the soldiers! What is this nonsense?”

Winter Cherry told him: “They had intended to do so, and I, who did not know of her hanging, dressed myself in her clothes and went out towards the soldiers, so that they would kill me and let her live. But Han Im went to her room and found her dead. So he cut her down and took her out to where I was, and I do not remember more, until I found myself on Han Im’s saddle on the way back here.”

“It is easy to see what Han Im did,” Lu-shan said, moodily. “And why he did it. But there are two questions which you have not answered.”

She replied: “I do not know the answers.”

Lu-shan said: “Since I have not yet asked the questions, how can that be? Listen—first, why did she hang herself? Second, why did you try to take her place?”

She said: “I do not know the answer to your first question, and to the second I can only say that the Emperor loved her, and I desired to serve the Emperor.”

“Show me where she died,” he commanded.

When they had gone to this other room, she told him: “She died here, Han Im said. There is the top part of the bowstring, still on the rafter. He thought that, unless he left it, the Emperor would not believe that she had hanged herself. Han Im said that she must have died at once—that her neck was broken. Now, may I go, please?”

Before they came out of the room Lu-shan rolled the porcelain stool from the corner, climbed upon it and untied the remainder of the bowstring. He coiled it up and put it in an inner pocket of his clothing.

Winter Cherry said: “She stood upon that stool to hang herself.”

Lu-shan rolled the stool back in the corner, and they went together out into the courtyard.

“Where is she buried?” he asked.

“It was not possible to bury her,” Winter Cherry replied.

From the courtyard where they stood they could hear shouting which seemed to be coming from the little garden by the summer-house. Clear Rain ran towards them.

“Stop them! They are killing each other!” she cried.

When he reached the garden Lu-shan saw Honeysuckle standing in the summerhouse with An Ching-hsu near her, sword in his hand. There was blood upon the blade of the sword, and below him, half in the water of the stream, Peng Chan-mu by in an untidy heap. The slow water of the stream was not now colourless over its white pebbles.

Lu-shan said: “I called you a diplomatist, and yet it would seem that you can behave like any Chinese. Can you not yet take your women without making a mess?”

Winter Cherry had come up beside him. She gasped when she saw her brother’s body, and at once realised all the possibilities.

“You must go at once,” she said. “If you do not, my father will want to fight with you, which would be foolish, and my grandfather, seeing now no second generation to tend the tombs—I do not know what he would do. Go quickly, before they come and find out. I have nothing more to tell you, so there is no reason for your staying and making further trouble and sorrow for all of us.”

An Lu-shan said: “Clean your sword and put it up. Then come with me. You have no more wisdom than your mother had. It is not thus that one may rule a country of philosophers. Quickly! And you, too,” he added to Winter Cherry.

She dared not try to make him change his mind. All three went through the courtyard to the doorway. Clear Rain was nowhere to be seen. Lu-shan put Winter Cherry in his own carriage. An Ching-hsu followed in the second.

“Leave the other,” Lu-shan ordered, and they moved off.

Father Peng turned his face to the wall. “I do not wish to see any of my family,” he said. “Although I have a son, that son has no son, and my father’s tomb and his father’s tomb must go untended on the hill side when my son is dead, and the hares and wild foxes will walk over our tombs and the weather will slowly cross out the names upon those tombs, and the wind and the worms will conspire together so that by and by there will be nothing of those tombs but a smooth place, and the heels of men will raise dust upon them.”

Peng Yeh said: “But . . .”

Father Peng cried in a loud voice: “Leave me!”

Outside the Lady of the Tapestry said: “He cannot be left like that. Old men die so easily when their hearts seem broken, that I fear to leave him as he says. But if we go in again he will be angry as well as heartbroken, and anger is as bad for an old man’s life as is sorrow. Alas!

Alas, I do not know what to do.”

Honeysuckle said: “You will forgive me for having overheard what you have just said. But, if it is a question of funeral songs, the one which you have just quoted is chanted only at the graves of common men. The Dew on the Garlic Leaf. . .”

Peng Yen turned sharply on his heel and left them.

The Lady of the Tapestry cried: “Alas, my son is dead and my husband does not know what to do. I know that his honourable father will certainly die from sorrow if he is left thus with his face to the wall. Aiya!”

Clear Rain, who had come up, said softly: “Let Honeysuckle go in to him. He is old and therefore courteous, and will feel compelled to talk with her. It may be that he will hate her, but if he talks he will not die. Prepare a bowl of hot broth and send it in by your youngest daughter. He will not blame her for disobeying his orders. The old are always absurdly tolerant of the young.”

Honeysuckle looked at the Lady of the Tapestry and the Lady of the Tapestry nodded assent. Honeysuckle went in through the dark door into the darker room.

“I am not of your family,” Honeysuckle said, “and therefore I am bold to enter. Further, the trouble was of my making, though not my intentional making, and though your son’s son has ridden on the Dragon, there is that in my hostess’ face and in her bearing which seems to me to say that the period which seems to have been set at the end of today’s sentence may after all turn out to be a comma.”

For a while the old man did not speak. The sound of his breathing was clear and yet rusty in the stillness of the undecorated room. While she waited, Honeysuckle looked round her and saw the low table, the scroll in fine calligraphy, and the spartan bed at the end of the room. She saw also the nail upon which nothing hung, and the curved patch of lighter wall just below it.

“Discourtesy is foreign to me,” Father Peng murmured, “but may I be permitted to ask why you are here?”

Honeysuckle replied: “You had a sword once—a sword which is now no longer hanging on your wall. You could not have put it to any purpose save to serve the Emperor. So with yourself. “When he returns, the Emperor will not wish to find everywhere more sorrow than has been directly occasioned by his sad going.”

Father Peng asked: “Who are you, girl, that talk in the old accents of the old tongue to which my ears are tuned? All round me, lately, it has seemed that speech was short and courtesy discounted; courtiers seem no longer courteous, the gemmed words of our ancestors seem now but settings from which the pearls have fallen, and language, that medium for the highest thoughts of man, serves but to count bushels of grain or number the plum stones on an empty dish. Who are you?”

Honeysuckle quoted: “When Lao-Tsu died, his disciple Chin Shih, come to mourn, yelled thrice and went away. He said, in more words than I have, that birth and death are natural things, not to be mourned with white clothes and instruments. He said that though the wood is burned, yet the fire is passed on; we know not that it has an ending.”

Father Peng demanded: “Where did you learn this thing?”

She answered: “Life is a school where wisdom may be learned, and never, until the coffin is last shut, does learning end. I have given you cause for hope, if you have heard rightly what I have said, and yet I find you gazing with closed eyes at nothing, I have traded on your courtesy in listening to me, and I have no right to say more. Your youngest granddaughter is hovering outside the door with a bowl of broth. Have I your permission to tell her to come in and tender it to you?”

The old man said: “Tell her to come in.”

As Mooi-tsai crossed the floor with the broth, Honeysuckle said: “I will leave you now. Walk as well as may be. Do not give Chin Shih cause for further unseemly commotion, I pray of you.”

As she went out she could hear Mooi-tsai saying: “Here, grandfather.”

“I am cruel,” An Lu-shan said, as the hoofs of the horses set small trails of dust wheeling to the sides of the road. “I am cruel. It gives me pleasure to be cruel. The duties and necessities which make me have to seem otherwise, the politenesses expected of a provincial governor—the need for these has now passed. My son and my officials may negotiate and persuade, but I do not now have to screen my nature behind these fragilities.”

Winter Cherry sat on the floor of the carriage, making no reply to this. She did not say anything of the hundred things in her heart, not only because she knew that to speak of them would be to precipitate further calamity, but also because the blows which the Gods had seen fit to award left her mind in so much of a turmoil that even the ability of speech seemed to call for an effort beyond her powers. She was not even conscious that she had not eaten since early morning. The only emotion which dimly penetrated her consciousness was one of smouldering hate—the hate which she felt for these tough unfeeling Northerners, who made pride at their lack of feeling the only outer sign of anything at all within.

Lu-shan seemed to understand.

He said: “You are hungry, and I am hungry. That is good. Your nature is revolted and you therefore hate me. That is also good. Your nostrils are full of the smell of blood. Your mind is dimly conspiring with your muscles to seize the knife from my belt and thrust it into my side, turning the blade about with the noisy grating of revenge. But you will not do this. You will be a true Chinese, doing nothing at all. Look! As we round this hill, you see Chang-an, my city of Chang-an, before you. We have come an unnecessary distance round to the southern outskirts, so that we may enter by the gate that leads into the Street of Heaven with three roads on our left and five on our right, through Red Bird Gate and the Imperial City to the Palace. And you know what awaits you within the Palace.”

Booking sideways, she could see his profile against the eastern sky. In front of her, as he had said, she saw the full stretch of the city, as she had seen it once before when she first came to enter the women’s apartments in the Pepper Rooms. The mingled dread and pleasure which her heart had then known seemed small indeed beside this emotion which her dulled heart could not even analyse or name. In Chang-an streets, the brown, long streets which now they faced, people lived, people lived and loved and were ordinary. Her thoughts, like a diffident mouse behind grain sacks, roused to ask her why she should thus be poised in publicity, why it was not for her to live the usual life of the people of a hundred surnames, why the sloping roofs of those long, brown streets could not shelter her from the heat and dust, from the rain and biting wind, in a glow of that conventional living which seemed to her now, above everything else, desirable. The good man, she remembered, does not think of himself. But here she was thinking of nothing else.

Lu-shan said: “My son, Ching-hsu, would kill me as readily as he killed your brother, if he could. He hates me, as you hate me, because I represent something that he cannot understand. He fears me, as you fear me, because I represent something whose actions he cannot predict. He loves me, as you love me, because I represent something that is not in him nor in you, something primitive and great. And now I have lacked dignity enough to step down from my Northern Throne and become like you a Chinese speaking with three neatly balanced platitudes. You are an insidious race, with no clear edges to your shadows. Look at the ruled lines of those shadows where the low sun cuts between the houses. Then look, in your mind’s eye, at the soft outlines of twice seventy-eight fans in the Hall at the summer festival. The first is myself. The second is you. And, though the feet of these horses now clatter proudly on the roads of my Capital city, there is within me the feeling that the fans may overcome the shadows. It is uncertainty, but it is better that it should be uncertainty.”

They swept under Red Bird Gate, through the Imperial City, and drew up beside the Palace buildings.

Beyond lay the darkening Park.

At Sui-yang, Ah Lai was writing a letter, taking a particular joy in the calligraphy.

Sitting at a table in a room which she had never seen, Winter Cherry watched Lu-shan and his son eating. Silent servants brought dishes of food from the taster at the door and set them on the table. Winter Cherry felt herself wondering whether a sorrow could be so deep, a fear so pressing, a revulsion so powerful that the effects of these cancelled each other out and the body went on living, eating, moving and giving speech as if there were no sorrow, no fear and no revulsion.

Lu-shan was saying: “You did not behave today, my son, as your past conduct has led me to expect. Always you were the careful, thoughtful person, swift to avoid swiftness, ready for the local compromise. And then, because you see some little drab whose eyes are not on you, you forget yourself and, whipping out your uncharacteristic sword, do to the drab’s companion what I now do to this very pleasant pear. I am disappointed in you.”

Ching-hsu replied: “One cannot always be icy. And, indeed, I think that you, who used to be an impulsive example to your family, expect too much of me. After all, he had seized a common hoe and pretended to be threatening me with it. The girl watched with wide eyes, and I felt that my reputation was in question. How could I do else?”

Winter Cherry said: “He was my brother.”

Ching-hsu replied, laughing: “That could be remedied, had your father the making of a man.”

Lu-shan observed: “To implant in this girl the precisely exact degree of suitable emotions is my affair, not yours. That she will run through the gamut of these emotions is as probable as I can manage to make it. Yet I would not owe anything of their inception to you, lest you should, claim for your own mind a vicarious pleasure in my pleasure, an unearned surfeit of my surfeit. In short, our meal is over, and you have your own apartments. These are mine. Come girl.”

The next room, and the next she had not seen. She did not see them now, if seeing meant more than mere appreciation of change. She was numbed, regarding the fingers of her left hand as though with surprise. She was cold, too, cold as the back of his sword blade that slid easily between silks and skin. Her voice, also, did not seem to be her own now and the great gong that boomed forever was her heart. Straw figures at the sacrifice have jointed limbs, and these limbs move as though they were men’s limbs. But the jointed, straw figures do not live. They are, indeed, offered as simple sacrifices to Gods who were once thought to to demand real sacrifices.

His broad bladed sword lay now on the low table near the door. It could be a short leap. But his grip was round her wrist and she could not leap. His back was towards the door, and her wide eyes opened no wider when she saw Lu Ching-hsu enter on soft feet and softly take the naked sword. Whether she fainted then or not, she was not sure, but ever after, in bad dreams, the broad blade of a sword would move across her imagination and swiftly, as the dream broke, a red screen would spread between her and the light, a red screen across which the slanting sword moved slantingly and rose and slanted and moved and coloured and dripped and was thrown into a corner with a clang which was the breaking of the dream.

“I have not enjoyed this day,” Clear Rain said to Honeysuckle. “Going was all right, and it was amusing until the unfortunate Peng Chan-mu lost his temper. Afterwards . . .”

Honeysuckle replied: “It is indeed exactly as you say. And now, having brought these excellent and decorative government horses back to the Capital, they refuse to go farther. It is as if they knew perfectly well that it would be improper for us to take them to the Palace, and yet, however firmly we urge them, they stand and look as stupid as any ordinary horse that has not had the three flowers branded on his rump. We cannot just leave them here while we walk home.”

Clear Rain said: “I wonder if it hurts very much to have three flowers branded on you.”

Honeysuckle smiled. “They might move then,” she said.

Then each girl, moved by the same impulse, took a pointed hairpin and stood just clear of the wheel.

“Do not let the wheel pass over your foot,” Clear Rain said. “Now!”

“When they felt the pin-pricks, the horses started off rapidly with the empty carriage, presumably in the direction of their palace stables.

Honeysuckle observed: “We are told of the Master that he did not ask after the horses. I do not think that we need ask about the horses either.”

They did not have to walk far, but when they reached the door of Mother Feng’s house a great crowd had already collected. Mother Feng stood truculendy at her doorway, arguing with servants wearing the livery of some great family. The two girls edged their way in until they could hear what was being said.

Mother Feng cried: “You may be servants of any family you wish, however exalted, but mine is a respectable house and the only sort of gifts which I am accustomed to see pass over my threshold are much more valuable than this roll of matting. Probably your master has some sort of practical joke in mind, and if I allowed you to bring the bundle in, he would make trouble with the authorities and accuse me of having stolen it.”

Honeysuckle said to the cleanest of the servants: “Tell me.”

The man said: “We have enough trouble in the world from the orders of our mistress, the honourable wife of the exalted An Ching-hsu, without listening to the quite unmerited rudeness of that old woman yonder. I think it would be better to tip the bundle in the road and go away.”

“But why did she send it?” Honeysuckle asked, moving out of the hearing of Mother Feng.

The servant replied: “My master’s father has been killed, and nobody is supposed to know who did the killing. My mistress found this body, unclothed, in the room with her dead father-in-law, and (not wishing to complicate affairs) she thought it best to send the body to the address written on a letter in a pocket of the clothes which had, seemingly, once belonged to this body.” He held out for her to see Ah Lai’s poem and his letter to Honeysuckle. “Do not tell me, after all the trouble that we have had, that this is not the house named in the letter!”

Honeysuckle ordered: “Take it inside to our room.”

Mother Feng would have interfered, but Honeysuckle stamped gently on both her feet and the bundle was carried in. The servants returned gladly, chattering amongst themselves, and Clear Rain loosed the bundle.

“I was afraid she was dead,” Honeysuckle said, “but it seems that to invest in a doctor might not certainly be a clear loss. You go, Clear Rain, for a doctor will probably come more quickly for you than for that stupid girl Cinnamon, and there is no one else to send.”

Mother Feng, who had come into the room with them, was sent for clean, hot water and Honeysuckle, disentangling Winter Cherry from the blood-soaked clothes in which she had been loosely wrapped, laid her upon the bed and began the more immediate and necessary cleansing.

When Clear Rain arrived with the doctor the visible parts of Winter Cherry were clean, pale and apparently lifeless. They brought the doctor a stool and he sat down by the bed.

Honeysuckle told him: “I do not know what has happened to her. She does not seem to have suffered any outside harm.”

“Her breath is feeble,” the doctor said, “and her pulse is like the wing of a butterfly in winter, when it has come out of a warm corner. She is very cold. If you can get her to drink a little hot broth, there may be a chance. Of course, although it is not my business to ask, my eyes could not fail to notice the bloodstained garments upon the floor.” He hesitated, and then said again: “It is not any of my business.”

Honeysuckle took some silver from a box and paid the doctor.

“You are quite right in what you have just said,” she replied, and the doctor went away looking very puzzled.

Then Honeysuckle and Clear Rain started to warm Winter Cherry and by-and-by the girl opened her lips far enough for a few drops of soup to enter.

Clear Rain observed: “It is quite an unusual experience to have three people in the same bed under such a pile of clothing that we, at least, are sweating as if we had run to the Palace ourselves instead of sending the horses. But it was a pity that we went to Ma Wei. Let this be a lesson to you, sister, not to carry the virtue of thrift too far, but next time to hire a proper messenger.”

“She is not so unpleasantly like a fish now,” Honeysuckle said.

The girl, Winter Cherry, was well enough in body to be taken home to the estate of her father towards the end of the second moon, and, two days after the festival of Clear Brightness which is the first day of the third moon, Honeysuckle and Clear Rain hired two carrying chairs with old and respectable men to carry them, setting out on the road to Ma Wei when the sun had only shown a quarter of his width above the horizon. When the Lady of the Tapestry had greeted them, she sent for her husband, excusing this unconventional behaviour with a quiet smile.

“After all,” she said, “not your doings nor my daughter’s seem to have been much ruled by convention.”

The two girls politely agreed with her, sitting on the edges of their stools and looking towards the door.

When Peng Yeh entered he, too, greeted them in a manner which they had not expected.

“I owe to you two girls the body of my daughter,” he said, “and therefore if in my speech to you I seem to speak as one who sees before him members of his own family, you will pardon what might seem to be discourtesy.”

Honeysuckle asked: “How is she?”

The Lady of the Tapestry replied: “She eats and sleeps and does all the other things which one would expect of a child. She came with us all on the feast two days ago to visit our family tombs and did there all the ceremonial performance which is necessary. My husband’s father was very much impressed by her behaviour. But with all this, she has only spoken once, and I did not hear her. It was the youngest, Mooi-tsai, who was near the summerhouse when she heard it. Shall I send for the child?”

But, as she spoke, the door darkened and Father Peng came in, followed by his two granddaughters, Mei and Mooi-tsai. Honeysuckle and Clear Rain rose to their feet with the rest and made low bows. Father Peng returned the bows, sat down on the stool which Mooi-tsai brought for him, and bade them all be seated.

“I am indeed glad,” Father Peng said, “that you two ladies have come, giving us the rare opportunity of hearing through not too many successive mouths what may be happening outside our rustic world. Here, everything is regulated by the seasons, and there lacks here that due information of unexpected activities which serve as sauce to our lives.”

Honeysuckle replied: “We are indeed grateful, sir, for the opportunity of seeing for ourselves that you are in the best of health. As for news, the capital is full of it, but whether it be reliable news or news which, as you yourself said, has passed through too many mouths to be readily believed, is a matter which a querulous person might dispute. You have probably heard much, but so far as certain facts are concerned one can only say that the Heir Apparent allowed himself to be proclaimed Emperor and that later, some time after the Bright Emperor had reached his present, remote palace in Cheng-tu, he, too, was graciously pleased to proclaim the same thing. There are, of course, further tales of the generals and armies of both sides, who pursue and are pursued probably nearly as much as public credulity would credit. But nothing is decisive. I should have said that nothing was decisive until, in the first moon of this year, the rebel An Lu-shan was slain by his rebel son. Nevertheless, it makes but little difference to us girls which rebel may sit temporarily upon the Dragon Throne.”

Clear Rain said: “An Lu-shan burnt the ancestral temple and the tablets of the Emperor.”

The old man seemed to be digesting this news, and Peng Yeh said: “It will solve itself in time. Here, as my father has said, we have little news with which to regale you.”

Father Peng asked: “Of what were you speaking before I came in?”

The Lady of the Tapestry replied: “Our visitors were very kindly enquiring after the health of our eldest daughter, and I was about to send for the little Mooi-tsai here, in order to discover what were the only words which our eldest daughter spoke on the occasion when the child overheard her in the summerhouse.” Father Peng said: “Tell us, child.”

Mooi-tsai answered: “She said: ‘We must be going now.’ That is all I heard.”

Clear Rain, having observed that no one else was going to speak immediately, observed: “There is clearly hope for her mind. She must have received a shock and a sorrow such as we have not been able to discover.”

Mei asked: “Is it permitted that I should speak?” Then, seeing this permission in their faces, she went on: “My sister has a folded piece of paper which she will allow no one to take away from her, a piece of paper which she unfolds and seems to read, but which she folds up and puts back into her inner pocket if she thinks that anyone is watching her.”

Then Winter Cherry herself came in, looked round the room without change of face, and went out. They saw her pass across the courtyard towards the garden.

The Lady of the Tapestry said: “You must stay with us for the night. We owe you much. Mooi-tsai, see that the servants give food to the bearers and arrange for their bedding.”

“So you hold your court at sunrise,” Honeysuckle said, as she came towards Father Peng. “You will forgive me if I seem to forget myself so far as to speak first, but girls such as I are always ready to speak, to chatter in fact, perhaps in order to keep their minds off other matters.”

Father Peng glanced at the sun in the East, then at the long shadow of the summerhouse across the garden. His hands were inside the sleeves of his padded coat.

“From a creditor one does not look for apologies,” he returned. “No—you two girls have strayed far from your accustomed path in order to do a kindness to me and my family, and I feel that you have the right to speak first at a Court which, if I were a younger man, would take on an appearance difficult to explain in terms of the customary morning obeisance. Indeed, I begin to realise how much I have lost lately by my irrational retirement into seclusion: I see how foolish it is to assume that a dulling of the body’s fires should be followed by a flagging of mental flexibility. In fact, I have already derived much pleasure from the conversation which you two have provided. Also, we are grateful to you, as I have said.”

Honeysuckle, too, put her hands into her padded sleeves.

“There is a new sun-birth each day,” she said. “I am always glad to exchange my more usual activities for a turn as midwife.”

Father Peng took her up. “Arising from that,” he said, “I remember, too, when your presence brought me back from the grey depression which followed on my grandson’s death, by holding out a tenuous hope of his replacement.”

She replied: “It is difficult to speak on that. You will understand that I am more accustomed to say of a girl that she is not going to have a child than to estimate the probability that she will. And with already married women it is still more difficult. There are signs . . . One can but wait in patience.”

Thus she concealed, as far as might be, her near-certainty that the Lady of the Tapestry was not, at the immediate future, likely to make Father Peng again the possessor of a grandson.

Father Peng was saying: “I should take it as a courtesy if you could so far postpone your business in the Capital as to spare us another day of your company. I shall claim the right to deal with the claims of your bearers. But it has occurred to me that the greater, unknown shock which my eldest granddaughter has seemingly suffered might yield to the lesser, known sorrow which she experienced on the day of the death of the Lady Yang. I thought that perhaps, if you or your friend took the girl out yonder on to the slope where she was saved from a horrible death by the eunuch Han Im, something of what she felt there might flow back into her empty mind and start a return to herself.”

Honeysuckle answered: “I will get Clear Rain to go with her. Clear Rain is the possessor of a soothing, receptive personality. I, myself, am a little too sharp at the corners, too much like . . .”

Father Peng replied: “Like unresponsive jade? No; you could not be said to resemble unresponsive jade. But if you think that the girl Clear Rain would serve our purpose the better, it shall be so. They ought to have a bowl of soup, at least, ready by now.”

Honeysuckle promptly praised the evening meal of the night before, saying that its efficiency as a satisfier of appetites left her unable to take any complimentary interest in food so soon.

“The frogs’ legs and bean-sprouts were remarkable enough in themselves,” she said, “but the sauce which was served with them, seemingly containing ginger and honey, made one forget the frogs in the excitement of the ginger, made one disregard the bean-sprouts in the surprise of the honey.”

Yet, when the soup was served in the Great Hall, she did not leave any at the bottom of her bowl.

Clear Rain said to the groom: “I think she wants to ride. You would be wise to put a saddle on the horse.”

The groom replied: “I will do so. You will want a horse as well? It is fortunate that in the neighbourhood of Chang-an we are famous throughout the Eight Directions for the breeding of horses; otherwise the officers who came from the Capital to requisition mounts would not have left us these two.” He busied himself with a girth.

Clear Rain had always wanted to ride a horse. She remembered that the Lady Kuo Kuo, the sister of the Lady Yang, had been famous for her horsemanship, and that it was owing to this skill that she and the wife of her unfortunate brother, Yang Kuo, had been killed by the soldiers at another place. But, despite this unhappy idea, she still wanted to ride, and the others, coming out of the Great Hall, were astonished to see the two girls riding out through the side doors, Winter Cherry leading and Clear Rain clinging to her own saddle-bow with mock desperation.

“If only I could grip the beast properly with my knees!” she cried as she went by.

Honeysuckle forbore to make a suitable reply, and they all watched the two move slowly up the slope away from them.

Clear Rain did not speak as they rode, for she was fully occupied. She had never dreamed that a seat could be so precarious that it demanded all her attention, and began to feel admiration for those horsemen whom one saw daily in Chang-an reining in their steeds to a pivoting stand or moving with them as if man and horse were part of the same animal.

Winter Cherry led on, walking her horse gently up the slope. Near the top, she reined in. Clear Rain came up beside her.

“It was here,” Winter Cherry said. Then she shook the reins and moved off back to the farm.

Later, rubbing herself carefully, Clear Rain told Honeysuckle what Winter Cherry had said.

Honeysuckle replied: “She is remembering. What she needs now to cure her is the presence of that boy Ah Lai, who is now far away on the Emperor’s business. And how did you like riding? As you went by on your way out I nearly called after you to keep your knees together.”

“But on a horse one cannot keep the knees together, whichever way one sits,” Clear Rain replied.

Honeysuckle answered: “I know. But I thought possibly our hosts might misunderstand me, and I did not want that. Here—let me rub some oil in. Then I must go and discuss poetry with the old man. All men are really the same, I have found out, for they all have something to show you, something to discuss with you, and something to ask your advice about. With the old man, it is poetry.”

“A finger’s breadth more towards the middle,” Clear Rain answered.

Old Father Peng wrote with fine calligraphy: