The strokes of the clock came too quickly for Ronald. They woke him
each time just when he was drowsy, telling him that it was two,
three, four, and he was not yet asleep. The clock struck more slowly
for Nancy. She sat alone in the sick room; she was absolute mistress
here; the orders of the doctor, the t'ai-t'ai's imperious will, which
was as strong as ever in its effect upon the family, supported the
girl in her right to keep the room clear.
"I want no snivelling humbugs in here," said the implacable old lady.
Apart from making polite inquiries, the others were glad to leave
Nancy the burden of the sick chamber. She sat in quiet, broken only
by the hard breathing of the patient, who was also awake. She was
not tempted to doze. There were too many puzzles of her own to
unravel. Her fortunes hung in the balance again, with the fortuitous
coincidence of Ronald's arrival in Paoling and the t'ai-t'ai's
sudden, withering illness. She wished Ronald had not come. She was
afraid of the sign, connecting it, as did the old t'ai-t'ai herself,
with her death. And she had wanted so grievously to be left, if only
for a few months, in the peace which had come since her protector had
extracted her secret of the sun and the moon.
She was in the mood which her father had surprised long ago when he
asked his daughter to whom he should marry her and she shirked the
question, saying that she did not wish to be married at all. She
knew she belonged to Ronald, her heart spoke unhesitatingly in his
defense, but she lacked courage to meet his claims; they promised so
much trouble, so much stress and uneasiness, perhaps a catastrophe
worse than the marriage which had seemed so certainly to destroy all
hope. Because she cherished this hope given back to life again, she
wanted to treat it tenderly, to nourish it in the quietness of her
mind, to allow it months of rest and growth, not to expose it
suddenly to the storms of decision, saying it must be settled now or
never. She dreaded casting everything upon the chances of a day to
know whether she must live or die. She had no heart to face Ronald
now. And yet he had come, and her aged friend was dying.
The past weeks had been happier beyond measure. Nancy had had
nothing further to conceal from the old t'ai-t'ai. They understood
one another perfectly. The t'ai-t'ai, having decided that Herrick's
scrolls were the will of heaven, never turned back from this belief.
"These things are ordained," she had declared; "we can't fight
against them."
She had walked with Nancy in the dried remnants of a garden which was
the only breathing space the Chou family could boast. The paths were
weedy and overgrown, the pond shrunk to a few pailfuls of stale
water, withered vines hung from a summer house which was too chilly
for them to enter. But Nancy had memories of winter sunshine, warm
when the wind did not blow, and of blue unclouded skies, and she
never forgot the picture of this imperious old woman who never
deigned to lean upon her gnarled red cane, but walked erect, letting
the sun glow proudly upon her white hair and bring mellow lustre from
her jacket, which was dyed the stain of crushed cherries. The
t'ai-ta'i had been a gay, unbent figure on days like those; the shape
of an irascible tyrant, which her family dreaded so cravenly, she
seemed to have left within doors to stand guard against her return.
Meantime she took her holiday to pour out for Nancy's ears all the
wealth of experience she had stored in the long changing years of her
life. In recounting days at court, days when her husband wore the
Emperor's button in his hat, and the peacock's feather, when he
presented himself for an audience at the mysterious morning hour of
three, his coat dazzling with twisted dragons, with a border
rainbow-colored to show sunlight foaming across waves of the sea, her
eyes grew luminous as they often did when she looked on Nancy; she
became almost tolerant of her successors and their failure.
"Heaven made them fools," she exclaimed, half pityingly. "They could
only do what they had it in them to do."
Nancy had never interrupted those stories. Her taste was not
spoiled, like the taste of too many Western children, by a surfeit of
books and papers. She was hearing romance from the lips of one who
had lived. Half shutting her eyes she let the sun draw bright
patterns from her lashes and fancied herself strolling through the
painted corridors of the lake palaces. Her childish fancy returned.
She should have been born earlier. She should have been one of the
maidens chosen for the Emperor. Then perhaps she could have won his
love. Her heart relaxed into meditating upon imaginary pictures
which never could have been true, but which were pleasant to think
about, wound about her as they were by the golden haze of the old
t'ai-t'ai's memories. But they made her slightly disdainful of the
West, till even the home of the Ferrises seemed common-place compared
with her dreams of a barge punted lazily through the flowering heads
of the lotus or the indolence of sipping tea in a red pavilion beside
a still pool.
"No, those times are gone," said the t'ai-t'ai with a sigh, "they
won't return in our day. And you, my child, will never be one of the
ladies of the Emperor." She smiled quietly at Nancy's conceit. "But
you can still hold these things in your heart; you can paint them and
make them into verses for your children. For you will have many
children and you will teach them to love China."
Nancy flushed at the t'ai-t'ai's prediction and wondered whose these
unborn children should be.
As for the old woman, she allowed no doubt of her meaning. She now
kept no secrets from the girl and was almost savage in her frankness,
unleashing her scorn for the degenerate crowd which cluttered the
family gates.
"You will not stay here," she repeated, times without count, "you
must not stay here. If you were one of their blood,"--the t'ai-t'ai,
in the pronouns she used, spoke as if even she and her family were
different races,--"if you were one of their blood, it would be
harder; they wouldn't wish to let you go, and your old family
wouldn't want you back; there would be lawsuits till the end of time.
But this is so simple. You are foreign born; when once you have
gone, they will not weep for you. They might stop you if they saw
you going, but only for face; after you have gone they will say, 'Oh,
she was nothing but a foreigner. What use was there keeping her
here?'"
So imperative did she become that Nancy asked once in astonishment:
"Do you wish me to leave you?"
"Ah no," laughed the old lady, "you know that was not my meaning.
You are more nearly kin to me than the children of my own flesh. I
could not bear to part with you now and spend the rest of my days
among fools. But neither can I bear the thought that you should
spend the rest of your days--so many more than mine--as a slave to
fools. So we must plan, you and I, how you are to go when I die.
Ha, it's lucky I am old and can see things clearly. Twenty years ago
I should have loved you just as much, my child, but I should never
have had boldness enough to counsel the wife of my grandson to
escape. Now, when I come to die, I command you to go, or I shall not
die peacefully."
"But you are not going to die for years and years," laughed Nancy.
"This is my seventy-third winter," said the old lady, startling her
with one of those sudden burning looks which made her eyes blaze, "my
seventy-third winter, and my last."
Weakly Nancy protested, but by this time she knew too well that the
t'ai-t'ai did not predict idly; her words, like her own father's
scroll, seemed to get themselves fulfilled. The thought had looked
absurd when she saw how straight the old woman carried herself, but
it lurked in the back passages of her brain and came forward many a
time during the ensuing weeks when the t'ai-t'ai abruptly would
shatter her desire to dwell secure in comfortable, comforting talks
by saying, "I--I shall soon die." Nancy came to believe, in spite of
herself, and to watch, with the fascination of one who has been
bewitched, the first marks of death upon the face of her aged friend.
"I am afraid of only one thing," said the t'ai-t'ai, "I am afraid of
you. I am afraid that you will be too proud to escape when my time
comes. So you must remember that it will be my express command then
that you go. I am your father and mother now; you owe your obedience
to me. I am the head of the family into which you have married; I
take upon myself your duties to this family; when I go to my
ancestors, I shall report to them what I have done and they will
approve; we were not wont to be a small-livered people and we did not
resist the will of heaven. Ah, my daughter, you have always obeyed,
you have understood my wishes before I asked them. We cannot tamper
with the mandate of heaven; your fate is your fate and you must
accept it. You must go back, I say, to the husband your father first
chose for you. You must bring him many sons to honor him and to
honor you. Here you will be childless and forsaken. What comfort
shall I have among the dead when I remember this? I will not eat of
your sacrifices till you promise me this one thing. I will go like a
starved spirit, I tell you, and be homeless and cold till you promise
me. Will you promise me? Will you promise me? I demand it of you
now because I know that I shall die."
Nancy had never seen the t'ai-t'ai so shaken by feeling. She felt
she had trespassed upon a queen in one of those moments of human
passion which a mere subject must pay with his life to witness.
"Yes," she whispered, falling down because she dared not look her
mistress in the face, "I will promise you; I will go, but I cannot go
till you are dead."
"That may be too late, my child."
"But I cannot go till you are dead--and oh, I don't want you to die."
"That may be too late."
"I cannot promise more than that," vowed Nancy, with a firmness that
would not be denied.
The t'ai-t'ai stooped and lifted her up.
"No, of course you can't," she agreed, laughing gayly. "I know you
can't. You can't help being yourself. But at least I have your
promise that you will go after I am dead; you will not think yourself
bound to linger here, wife and no wife, making yourself miserable and
others spiteful. That is not any duty you owe to your father, or to
me, or to Ming-te--he has a wife who is only waiting to take your
title."
She paused for a moment and then burst out again in tones of
indignation:--
"Ah, why can't other people see things clearly? I know my daughter
and my daughter-in-law; I know every thought in their heads. They
don't want you here and yet they won't want to let you go. They have
a hundred imaginary scores to pay, scores against you, scores against
me. They are angry even now because I protect you. They would pull
down the family rather than forgo one item of the spite they ache to
visit upon you. And why?--for no cause at all except their own
greed. They gloat over the thought of humbling you and shaming you.
They would have done it anyway because you will be helpless and in
their power and because everything that goes wrong in their lives
will be your fault. But they will be harsher now because I have
taken you for my friend. They will remember every bit of honest
advice I gave them and then they'll say, 'The old t'ai-t'ai said this
and the old t'ai-t'ai said that, but the old t'ai-t'ai is dead; what
shall we do? Ah, let's go and beat the foreign hsi-fu.'"
Nancy could not help laughing at the droll accuracy of this picture.
It was such as Kuei-lien might have portrayed.
"Yes, you laugh," sniffed the old woman, having joined in the laugh
herself, "but it is only because you see how lifelike are my words.
You can fancy your p'o-p'o, after a good cry on my grave, after
calling out, 'Venerable and sacred old mother, you have left your
undutiful, ignorant daughter-in-law blinded with tears, unable to eat
or to sleep from her grief for you; come back and let me grovel at
your feet and make amends for my ten thousand unfilial sins.' You
can see her coming home, saying, 'Heaven be praised, the old hag is
dead.' Eh, she will make you eat with the pigs and sleep with the
dogs. No, my child, if you will stay till I am dead you must be
wary, you must be clever; there are foreigners in this place; go to
them and go quickly, and remember what your father wrote for you.
These women, pooh! they don't want you, yet they will try to keep you
here so that they can spit on you till their lips shrivel round their
yellow teeth."
Nancy did not enjoy these petulant storms and was glad when her
mistress returned to sunnier moods.
The t'ai-t'ai did not take up the subject again. The next were days
of unequaled calm. The weather was mild, as sometimes it will be in
the deep of winter. A drowsy peace settled on the whole household
after the excitement of the autumn. Nancy moved at ease through the
house, often meeting the pretty, gentle girl who was so much more
Ming-te's wife than she, and every time they met it was with a
friendly greeting, every time with a pleasing deference on the part
of the latest newcomer to the foreigner who in name was her mistress.
Nancy's stepmother, her mother-in-law, both withheld their scoldings
as if they were grateful to her for keeping the old t'ai-t'ai out of
mischief; it seemed hard to believe they were storing venom against
her. Ming-te Nancy never saw. He was busy with his studies. The
father was away. The relatives, who had been a burden to the family
chest, had taken their squabbling children home.
Nancy had unbroken leisure to read to the t'ai-t'ai, to listen to
her, to match poems with her keen old mind. And many still
afternoons they walked in the garden, enjoying sunshine so tranquil
that Nancy lost all but the faintest shadow of dread that her friend
might die. Death could not intrude upon this unclouded weather. She
laughed at death and was willing to go on like this till she too was
old, hearing the golden echo of famous times from the lips of a
masterful, good-humored old woman.
Then came the wind and the dust hiding the sun, drifting through the
frail protection of paper windows, laying floors and tables and
chairs thick with sifted sand from the desert. Then came cold and
snow and again the fierce voice of the north wind, its icy breath
which no defense could keep out, numbing the faces and hands of those
who tried to stand against it. People shivered and huddled on the
k'ang to get what comfort they could from its warmth. The change
fell so swiftly that Nancy could not shake herself all at once out of
the calm which had been lulling her fears. And when she awoke it was
only to outward amazement at the violence of a tempest such as she
had never seen in Peking, such as she could not see except in these
bleak villages of the Chihli plains, where the gales of half Asia
rushed down unthwarted, trying to tear roofs from their walls, doors
from their fastenings, courage from human hearts.
For a day the t'ai-t'ai must have complained of a chill before Nancy
paid particular heed. She had been attentive, of course, from the
first because, as the old woman had said, the girl outguessed every
wish. But after a day when the chill had not begun to mend, but was
growing worse, Nancy felt a doubt slip like ice through her veins.
She remembered the t'ai-t'ai's prediction. In an instant she
realized that death might already have stolen his march: that it was
a treacherous little chill like this, so rapidly growing worse, which
might end the old woman's seventy-three indomitable years. Fever,
pain, coughing. Nancy was frightened by the remorseless haste they
made, the way they tore down the strength of her mistress.
Backed by the wish of the sick woman, she forced the family to send
for the foreign doctor, an act they were most reluctant to do,
dismayed that the t'ai-t'ai at her age should turn from the tried
ways of the Chinese physician. If she died the blame would not be
theirs.
The foreign doctor had come. Nancy read in his face how little hope
there was. And he had brought the news of Ronald's appearance in
Paoling.
Her thoughts upside down, her mind confused, her heart afraid, Nancy
sat through the long desolate hours of the night groping for the
power to understand these fresh blows fate had dealt her. She had a
promise to think of, and she wondered how she could keep it.