Kuei-Lien more than justified her connection with the Ferris
household by the news she was able to bring. Not so long after Nancy
herself, Ronald knew that Nancy's husband--he made a grimace every
time he used the word--was to take a second wife. He was pleased.
Any barrier between Nancy and Ming-te warmed his own hopes and, from
the liberal store of gossip which Kuei-lien got from Paoling, it
seemed that there were real barriers of distrust between the young
couple. Nancy, he learned, had become the attendant of the old
grandmother, "a terrible old woman," Kuei-lien volunteered. This was
not such good news except that serfdom to the old t'ai-t'ai saved her
from bondage to the rest of the family, for the old lady, declared
Kuei-lien, was very jealous of those who waited upon her, kept them
always in sight, always ready to obey her uncounted whims. Nancy
would have few chances to see her husband. Ronald made Edward
translate every phrase of Kuei-lien's voluble information, seeking
what hints he could to guide his own course of action.
"How long will things go on like this?" he demanded.
Kuei-lien shrugged her shoulders.
"I am not a fortune-teller," she said; "it will go on till the old
t'ai-t'ai dies, at least."
"And if the old t'ai-t'ai dies?"
"Then she will be free to wait upon her mother-in-law."
Kuei-lien smiled, but Ronald saw what she told was likely.
"Do you think she is happy?" he asked.
"She must be very stupid to be happy in such a place. Hm-m," she
grunted, "I know the family. Very quarrelsome they are and they will
quarrel with her and make her a servant because they didn't want her.
They only took her because of the money. They show they don't want
her, else why should they get a new wife so soon? They want Chinese
children. They will try to give this woman first place."
"Then what hope is there for Nancy?" Ronald inquired desperately.
"Oh, she can jump into a well. The wells at Paoling are quite salty,
but they are deep."
Ronald was out of patience with Kuei-lien's grim humor.
"Couldn't she run away?" he suggested.
"Yes, she could run away, but they would soon follow. Where could
she fly to? She has lived behind walls all her life; she doesn't
know whether Peking is east, west, south, or north, and if she
asked--ha, then she would be discovered. Chinese girls don't walk
through the country asking their way to Peking."
Ronald was growing more and more restive under the restrictions of
custom which kept him from seeing Nancy, although he knew no obstacle
could stop him, were it not for the obstacles she herself would make.
But he felt the need to move, to do something, no matter how useless
it might be.
"I must go there," he said. "Are there any foreigners in Paoling?"
"Yes, there is a foreign doctor at the hospital. Perhaps there are
others, but they cannot help you. The Chou family has nothing to do
with missionaries. You would see the front gate; that is all. A
beggar can see as much."
Nevertheless Ronald decided to go. Classes did not stop till
January, but he found out the names of the foreigners who lived in
this isolated town, got letters to them, and set out on the first of
his holidays with no definite plan except that it was better to be
moving than to sit at home with arms folded. The weather was
bitterly cold. The miserable train depressed his spirits. But even
that was luxury compared to the mule cart in which he jolted all day.
The country was like a frozen desert; the cart slipped and plunged
and nearly overturned in deep icy ruts. If he could get Nancy out of
a land like this, Ronald vowed, never would he venture into it again.
The doctor and his wife, having been informed of his coming, were
glad to welcome him. They thawed his stiff limbs before a great
stove. His visit interested them the more because they had heard of
a foreign woman hidden in one of the Chinese families of the town.
The wife, especially, was sympathetic over every detail of Nancy's
story. But neither of them could think of any way to see the girl.
"These places are barred to us," the doctor explained, "except when
someone is very ill. Then, when the patient has been mauled and
mishandled, plastered with dirty paper and stuck with infected
needles, they call us in to undo the mischief of the Chinese doctors."
Just as if to give point to this remark, a servant came in with a
card and a request that he come at once to attend a sick woman.
"Chou Hu-wei," mused the doctor, reading the card; he turned abruptly
to Ronald. "There is witchcraft in this," he said, "this is the very
same family you were seeking. I expect it's the old t'ai-t'ai
herself--didn't you say it was she that the sister of your young
friend was attached to? Yes, she must be the one. These January
winds snuff out old lives. Ah, dear me, Paoling is not a place to
grow old in."
It was the old t'ai-t'ai, the doctor found, and little chance of life
he gave her. He read her case at the first glance and knew that the
winds had done their work.
"Pneumonia--just what I feared," he said to himself.
The urgency of the case, the need of clearing out curious hangers-on
and of getting ventilation to relieve the fumes of charcoal braziers
so fully busied him that it was an hour before he could pause to
notice the help he had been given by a foreign girl in Chinese
clothes. The patient was as comfortable as she could be, lying
sleepless but fully conscious, like one determined to die with her
mind ruling to the last, not in the craven manner to let death sneak
upon her when she was senseless. Nancy stood by her side, but with
the same rigid control over her nerves.
"I expected to find you here," said the doctor. "Only to-day a
visitor has come from Peking, a Mr. Nasmith--ah, you know him, I see;
he is your brother's guardian. He came especially to find out
whether you were well."
"What does he say?" asked the t'ai-t'ai, letting no movement escape
her vigilant eyes, even in her pain, so that Nancy's start at
Ronald's name gave her the hint that something weighty had been said.
"He says that the man whom my father first chose for my husband has
come to Paoling," answered Nancy.
"Ah, it is fate," exclaimed the t'ai-t'ai. "I know now my time is
finished. I will die. You must not wait for me, child. You must go
back to him."
At these words Nancy's endurance crumpled.
"No, no, no," she cried, "you must not die! What can I do if you
die? I don't want to go back. I want to stay with you. Don't let
her die," she begged the doctor, forgetting, so excited she was, to
speak English.
She fell down beside the bed and hid her face in her hands.
"I am not your sun, child," said the old woman softly; "you must not
grieve for me. Of course I must die, but I shall take these words of
yours with me; I shall not need any other sacrifice. They will burn
money and houses and servants and weep on my grave till the sand has
scoured the name from my stone, but I shall pay no attention to any
of these; I shall always hear your words and smell them like burning
sandalwood."
But Nancy would not be comforted. She jumped up again and faced the
doctor with glowering eyes.
"You will not let her die, will you?" she demanded.
"Come, come, child, keep up your courage," said the doctor in his
steadiest tones, "we won't talk of dying yet. You do your part and I
will do mine."
He diverted her attention with many precautions about the care of the
patient and about keeping the room free from intruders, while all the
time the old t'ai-t'ai listened with a smile on her lips as though
she deemed they were taking many needless pains.
"I have seen the girl you were looking for," he told Ronald, when he
had come home again, "and you can set your heart at rest about one
thing; she has not been ill-treated by the old t'ai-t'ai she is
serving. I don't know what her relations with the rest of the family
may be; I can guess that they have not been happy. But as to her
feelings for the old t'ai-t'ai--well, I have been beside many
deathbeds and I have never seen such an outburst of grief and love."
He detailed the scene exactly as it had happened before his eyes.
Ronald was puzzled. He had heard such evil things about Nancy's aged
mistress, such harsh pictures had been painted by Kuei-lien's vivid
tongue, that he could not think of her as anything but an enemy.
"You say she told Nancy not to wait but to come to me?"
"That certainly was what I gathered. I have been twenty-five years
in China; I don't often mistake words as clear as hers."
Ronald groaned.
"I wonder if she is going to sacrifice herself once more, just to
please this old woman," he exclaimed.
The doctor had been moved by his impression of Nancy's love and also
by the quiet dignity with which the sick woman bore her illness. He
was a little out of patience with Ronald's remark, which sounded both
hard and selfish.
"It seems foolish to you, no doubt," he said testily, "but more of
her spirit would not be bad for the world. She knows her duty and is
going to do it, no matter what you or I choose to say, and she thinks
her old mistress is worth the sacrifice. For my part, I say more
power to her arm. Pluck like that is not going to lose in the end."
"Yet the old t'ai-t'ai is going to die, isn't she?" asked Ronald.
"I should say, yes. She is very ill and pneumonia doesn't spare
people at her age. But of course there is no certainty in these
matters. Your friend might make her live--I have seen miracles like
that before--if it were not for the fact that the old lady quite
evidently thinks it is time to die and has made up her mind to die.
The Chinese will do that, you know, when they grow old; sometimes
their families suggest it to them because they have become feeble and
a nuisance. That's a side of filial piety we don't hear advertised.
But when they make up their minds to die, when they deliberately set
themselves to give up the ghost,--I knew one old man who passed in
ten days from sound health to the coffin,--when they do that, they
are past praying for. I doubt if this old woman will live for all
the doctors in the world. She seems to think she can help your
friend by dying now."
"But if she dies, how will Nancy fare with the rest of the family?"
"Hm-m, I don't think she expects a very cordial time. Probably it
will be spear against buckler, as the Chinese say."
"It was extraordinary," Ronald observed, beginning to pick up one by
one the astonishing details of what the doctor had heard, "it was
extraordinary that the t'ai-t'ai should have told Nancy to come to
me."
"It was extraordinary indeed. I have never heard the like. For one
of her position--in the husband's family, mind you--advising a hsi-fu
to run away, that's absolutely without precedent. I don't understand
it, however much she may like your friend Nancy. Of course her being
a foreigner makes a big difference; the family is surely not keen on
a foreign wife,--that second marriage, done so soon, proves
that,--but they took her with their eyes open and they would not
relish the poor compliment of her running away. Did her father, by
the way, ask you first to be this girl's husband?"
"Yes," acknowledged Ronald.
"You didn't tell me that, you know. Were you engaged to her?"
"No."
"Well, your being here has become, for some reason, very important in
the old t'ai-t'ai's eyes. Perhaps you can untangle it."
Ronald thought he could, though he did not trouble the doctor with
his reasons, for the latter was ready for bed and said frankly that
daylight solved more puzzles than lamplight. The t'ai-t'ai had made
a curious remark about the sun. This gave the lover his cue; he lay
awake nearly till daybreak going back and forth over scenes of the
past: the importance Herrick ascribed to the scrolls he had written;
Nancy's surprise when she saw them; the indication that the t'ai-t'ai
knew of them. The sentences danced in his brain till he became
afraid of them. Herrick must have trafficked with black art when he
wrote those lines. They were always promising him Nancy, always
withholding her.
At times he felt like copying the passive manners of the East and
sitting, hands in lap, waiting for the prophecy, if prophecy it were,
to fulfill itself, but his restless Western blood would not keep him
still. The excitement of having Nancy so near, of almost having been
given her by the unlooked-for command of the t'ai-t'ai, this was too
urgent for sleep. Perhaps the old woman would die to-day, and Nancy
would come. His fingers ached to pull away the curtain of these next
few hours. He dared not hope too much. If that evil family hid her
away again, he was ready to drag down their sagging house round their
ears.
Hour after hour struck from the clock beneath his bedroom. He
wondered whether Nancy were standing vigil over the dying woman whom
he envied because she loved. If only he could keep vigil with her!