After Nancy's departure, the ceremonies again could take their
appointed course. The firecrackers blazed and snapped, the little
horns, with voices like thin piping clarionets, again commenced their
weird din, the trumpets blew; away went the trays, with Nancy's own
bright gift, to the home of her future husband. Now came men who
wore scarlet sashes, to bring the large red document revealing in its
eight gold characters the celestial ordinance beneath which Ming-te
had been born; two others took away with them Nancy's eight
characters, putting her destiny eternally into the keeping of her
betrothed.
In these things Nancy took no part. She returned to the garden and
listened to the exulting turmoil with ears that understood its
meaning less than the resonant whisper of the pines. The flowers,
nodding together their many-colored heads, made her homesick for the
mountains and summer sunshine. She wondered where her poor token
would go, her golden-hued chrysanthemums, her one small effort to ask
pity and love from a youth she had never seen. Would those unvalued
blossoms come by some extreme chance to his eyes and tell him that
she had sent them? No, he would not see the flowers; they might have
fallen bedraggled into the streets; he could see only the gaudy,
costly things, the silk, the cloth, the slippers, things the
t'ai-t'ai had got ready without any reference to her. He had sent
her no token, no sign, just inanimate rubbish. And yet it was this
cold stranger who was receiving the precious eight characters, the
red cards Nancy knew with a superstitious shudder were being taken
away like some virtue gone out of her.
Nancy contemplated these matters with a gentle bitterness. From
years back this hour had been inevitable; perhaps she had been
spoiled by its having been so long delayed. She could not complain,
but her heart was sad, filled with foreboding of that second more
sinister hour when she must be locked into the scarlet bridal chair.
When that hour should come, whether soon or late, she had no clue.
But she was betrothed; it must come in the end. She must walk now a
straitened path, never again to see Elizabeth and Helen--or Mr.
Nasmith, never again with the heart to fling cones from the high
branches of the pines upon her laughing, vexed brother.
Winter came; the garden was parched and bleak. When the children
went out to play in the cold dry sunshine they wore thickly padded
garments which transformed them into stuffed dummies, a misshapen
caricature of the cool clean limbs and lithe bodies that had made the
pine tree their own kingdom in July.
Nancy accepted her lot. She got great comfort in learning by an
indirect message from her father that there was to be no marriage for
four whole years. Much might intervene in four years, so she did not
demur at the new task of sewing for her trousseau; after the first
shock it became like any other sewing and the boy a shadowy, almost
legendary, figure only vaguely able to threaten her happiness from a
distant horizon.
Herrick alone was morose. He had regretted the engagement before it
was made; afterward he regretted it more. He lost sleep. The peace
he had hoped to buy became more elusive than ever because all the
time Kuei-lien was torturing him by little subtle ironies upon the
life to which he was dooming Nancy. Her words came so innocently
that the man never guessed the intent behind them. He did know this:
that he was a prey to nightmare, to dreams in which Nancy's mother
and the amah and Nasmith all were inextricably mixed, the one burden
of their tongues and their eyes being the evil he had done. He was
becoming a haunted man, and no matter how desperately he might fight
to preserve his wits, to keep his mind and his strength for the sake
of his children, there was a point beyond which flesh and nerves
could not endure; he gave way with a crash, like the rending of a
great tree, and for days offered himself to Kuei-lien to be trampled
on.
When he emerged, everyone in the house knew that he was a sick man.
He did not regain his poise with the old alertness, did not even
struggle to regain it, but lay back, shaking, infirm, afraid to move
lest he provoke one of his terrible spasms of the heart.
"You are killing him," protested the t'ai-t'ai to Kuei-lien. For so
many years she had been used to Herrick's moderate indulgence in
opium and kao-liang spirits that she had not realized her husband's
self-control could relax with such speed. A hale and hearty old age
anyone would have predicted for Timothy Herrick, yet here was death
written on his face.
The t'ai-t'ai had not prepared for this. She could not afford to let
Herrick die now, with Nancy unmarried, the ten thousand taels
undelivered, worse than all, Herrick's fortune, of which no one knew
the exact amount, locked up in that mysterious, impregnable place,
the English bank, whence only Herrick's magically written slips of
paper could draw forth the silver stream. The woman, of course, knew
nothing of law or banking practice; of her own accord she would not
have trusted a copper behind the brass grille of a bank. If Herrick
died, she feared every cent he possessed might be taken out of her
grasp. She could not write checks; even for Nancy's dowry she had no
security. Her only hopes were to marry Nancy while her father lived
and to persuade him into transferring his wealth from inaccessible
bank vaults to the tangible form which had served her forefathers,
into gold ornaments and pearls, and ingots snugly buried in the
garden.
"You are killing him," she warned Kuei-lien. "A man of his years
cannot stand these excesses."
"Oh," said the concubine, with a touch of insolence she had never
shown before, "do you credit me with being the mistress? If my
master commands, what can I do but obey? His is the will, not mine."
The t'ai-t'ai opened her ears at this tart remark. She looked
narrowly at Kuei-lien, wondering whether this last and least of her
husband's concubines were using her favor to rob an infatuated man.
The shrewd suspicion entered her mind that Kuei-lien was utilizing
these frenzies of sordid passion, when Herrick's senses were
bemuddled, to extract money from her master, to extract those
formidable little slips of paper.
"Well, you may rest for a while. Your master is too sick for
excitement. I will look after him," she said.
Kuei-lien nodded and withdrew.
"I shall have to send her away or sell her," thought the t'ai-t'ai.
"This kind of business can't go on."
She took rigorous charge of her husband, put him in bed, administered
homely Chinese medicines, refused to let anyone see him. So languid
was Herrick's mood that the man acquiesced, only complaining in an
occasional peevish sentence because Kuei-lien had not come to see
him. During the stupor which possessed him the t'ai-t'ai found it
easy to get his keys and she pulled out the check book in which she
had seen him write. It had been his habit to draw out limited sums
each month, giving the checks to be cashed by an old and recognized
servant. The woman took the book, looked at the stubs crosswise and
upside down, but could make neither head nor tail of them. Finally
she sought Edward's help.
"Your father is not well and wants you to help me with some
business," she explained. "Will you read what is written here."
After some confusion between the numbers of the checks, the dates,
and the sums, Edward found the gist of the story the stubs told and
soon was able to translate the monthly record, "To cash, such and
such a sum," "To cash, such and such a sum," while the t'ai-t'ai
noted the figures in her memory. Then appeared what she suspected,
checks for sums she had never received. They began in the summer and
continued through the autumn. She had Edward repeat them again and
again till the figures were printed indelibly on her mind.
The t'ai-t'ai pondered this new problem at some length. She was
quite certain that Kuei-lien could not have cashed checks for such
large amounts without enlisting the help of her husband's old
messenger. This faithful man had been associated so invariably with
the process of getting money that the woman had come to believe his
participation was an unalterable step in the procedure. He was not
the man to be bribed in a day; the t'ai-t'ai was reasonably certain
of his honesty. The probability then was that Kuei-lien still held
the checks and was waiting a favorable chance to exchange them.
When once the t'ai-t'ai had reached this conclusion, her first
impulse was to call the concubine to her husband and in her absence
to search every corner of her boxes, every corner of her room; if
this failed, to summon two strong servants, strip the girl, and
search every article of her clothing. It was probably on her body
that Kuei-lien would carry the checks.
"I should have to sell her after that," the woman decided.
Second thought, however, was more deliberate, not from any pity for
Kuei-lien, but because there certainly would be scandal; the story
would reach Herrick's ears--the t'ai-t'ai could trust her enemies for
that--and no one knew what vengeance the man might exact, in his
weakened, peevish condition, for the loss of a favorite concubine.
Even this the angry woman might have risked, if the thought had not
occurred to her that by making terms with Kuei-lien she could use the
wiles of the concubine to get even larger sums from her husband, to
get the money he always laughingly had insisted was safe, into the
only safe form the t'ai-t'ai recognized, the safety of good, tangible
silver. Yes, the concubine was worth winning over; she could do
this; she might even persuade the old man to allow an earlier
marriage for Nancy.
The t'ai-t'ai went to Kuei-lien's room and found the concubine seated
cross-legged on the k'ang, the brick oven which served for divan and
bed. She was smoking cigarettes, her incessant habit. At the
t'ai-t'ai's entry, however, she jumped up, brought her mistress to
the k'ang, and only after repeated urging by the t'ai-t'ai consented
to sit on the warm rush mats beside her. There was much desultory
talk during which the older woman searched Kuei-lien's appearance
with keen eyes to see if she had acquired any unusual jewelry;
Kuei-lien was fastidiously dressed, rather daringly, with short full
trousers barely topping a startling length of cerise stocking, but
there were no signs of jewelry. This was some evidence that the
checks had not been cashed. Finally, when the time seemed ripe, the
t'ai-t'ai became more direct in her speech. She had steered the
conversation to the subject of Herrick's ill health.
"It is a pity he will go to these excesses," Kuei-lien agreed. "I
can do nothing to stop him when the passion comes over him. Hai--at
times I am afraid. He becomes like a madman and strikes me if I try
to take his opium pipe away."
"Does he ever pay you for these blows?" asked the t'ai-t'ai shrewdly.
Kuei-lien winced a little.
"Oh yes, he pays me," she laughed, "pays me with bruises. I will
show you my back; it is black and blue."
"He pays you with nothing more substantial?"
"Not even a ring has he given me."
"No, not a ring, but little pieces of paper, little pieces of paper
which you have not been able to exchange for money. Wouldn't you
like Lao Yang's assistance to cash them?"
Kuei-lien's face grew red with a blush the girl could not check, but
she held her body from a second telltale jerk.
"I don't understand what you mean," she said.
"Come now," protested the t'ai-t'ai, "you can't deny that you
received checks for these amounts." She reeled off from memory the
sums and dates of the checks she was certain Kuei-lien had received.
"What should I do with checks?" asked the girl.
"That's just the point," the t'ai-t'ai smiled in return; "what should
you do with them? They are useless in their present form and you
will never be permitted to change them."
"I don't know anything about these things," Kuei-lien persisted
stubbornly.
"Just think a little," her mistress went on in the same bland voice,
"and don't try to keep up appearances before me. Who brought you up,
may I ask? Who saved you from being a slattern in the scullery at
this very moment? It's worth remembering, because the same person
who lifted you to your present favor can throw you down again." The
t'ai-t'ai allowed a minute for these words to have their effect while
she looked round the room. "You are very comfortable here," she
remarked, "you have prospered well for the short time you have been
here--well-filled boxes, plenty of clothes; I have indeed been
generous to you. It would be a pity to lose them all."
"They are yours," admitted Kuei-lien. "I have no claim to them.
Take them."
"Ah, don't try that game of candor with me," said the woman. "I am
not threatening, mind you. I am simply appealing to your
reasonableness. I should be sorely disappointed if the protégée over
whom I have taken such pains proved to be merely a clever fool. Just
let me imagine two pictures for you. On the one hand you cling
obstinately to little bits of paper for which you never can get a
copper cent. What do I do? I call in two strong men who are waiting
outside; they tie a piece of cloth across your mouth so as not to
disturb the household unnecessarily, then they twist your arms
so--and so; do you think you wouldn't soon be anxious to point out
these worthless checks? Or they ransack these boxes, take off these
pretty clothes, and cut the linings away with scissors; don't you
think we could find them even if you had to stand stark naked
watching us? What good would you get of your stubbornness? Just the
pleasure of being sold back to be a slave again. That's one
picture," concluded the t'ai-t'ai, as though she had been telling a
story.
Kuei-lien listened in startled attention, quite hypnotized by the
woman's smooth voice.
"Now for the other side, a much more cheerful picture. We'll imagine
you giving me these checks. Lao Yang, at my orders, will cash them.
Of that money I will give you one fourth. You may think that is too
little, but it is more than you could get in any other way; it is
much more than nothing. The best part of it is, you have the chance
of earning more money on the same terms. It is not wrong. The Great
Man is not well, as you know, and he is stubborn about keeping his
money in a foreign bank. He thinks he can provide for us in time,
but I know his disease: pfui! in a moment he's gone--like a candle
blown out. If he dies, what becomes of us? Is it our fault for
snatching what safeguards we can? Well, that's the other picture.
You may not be contented with a fourth, but you'll like it better
than being sold to a brothel. I am not easy with those who betray
me."
Kuei-lien showed her mettle by smiling.
"Yes, I do like the second picture better," she said, "it is drawn
very well. Do you offer me this picture?"
"I offer it--and I shall add a few more colors on the day Nancy
marries my nephew. You have had your own game there, I know," she
remarked cheerfully, "but your game is a risky one. I don't blame
you for trying your own plans, but you were trying for all or
nothing. While I'm here, it would have been nothing."
"I understand," said Kuei-lien. "I accept your offer."
"I am glad my judgment has been vindicated. I had begun to fear you
were just like the common trash who remain slaves all their lives.
They think they are clever because the cat doesn't stop them when
they go to snatch rice from the trap. You are sensible; you
understand that there is profit in being grateful."
Kuei-lien answered the t'ai-t'ai by unbuttoning her jacket and
loosening her clothes till she could reach the narrow girdle bound
next to her skin. Pulling it out, she cut the threads and extracted
five folded slips of paper.
"That is the proper number," said the t'ai-t'ai. "I will bring you a
fourth of this sum to-morrow. Remember, you have a free hand. I
will see that no one interferes with you. Don't be too hasty, don't
drive the Great Man to excess; then there should be many more of
these."
Calmly she bowed herself out.