In the morning the doctor came again. He found no change in his
patient, who still lay open-eyed on her bed, evidently thinking,
though she did not talk. It hurt her too much to talk. She seemed
content when the doctor assured her Ronald was still in Paoling and
in no immediate hurry to go.
"You can bring him with you the next time you come," she said.
The doctor looked rather anxiously toward Nancy.
"You must take some rest yourself, my child," he said. "I can't have
two sick people on my hands."
The old t'ai-t'ai seemed to understand what he was saying.
"Yes, tell her to sleep," she insisted; "she must sleep. I shall be
all right. My daughter can look after me."
Reluctantly Nancy gave up her post to her stepmother. She was sure
she could not sleep. There were too many problems on her mind. Yet
such was her need of rest that her eyes closed from sheer heaviness
and nothing more did she know till she awoke late in the afternoon,
surprised to find the storm abated and clear, cold sunshine gleaming
through the paper windows of her room. Hurriedly she dressed and
opened the door. The t'ai-t'ai turned her eyes when the girl entered
and greeted her with a faint smile.
"Death is a slow business," she said, with the coolest of voices.
She seemed to talk with more ease. Nancy did not guess how she had
taken advantage of her own absence to defy the doctor's orders and
speak out her mind to her daughter.
"What are you going to do with this girl when I die?" she had begun.
"Do?" echoed Nancy's stepmother, "what should I do? I am not her
husband. I am not her mother-in-law, am I? What should I do?"
"I asked you what you are going to do with her," repeated the old
woman, with an acid inflection to the question.
"What do you want done with her?" countered the daughter, anxious to
see where her mother's words were leading.
"I want you to let her go. She does not belong here. Ming-te has a
wife; he is contented. I want you to send her back to her own
people."
"But that would cause scandal."
"Scandal, nonsense! No more scandal than was caused by your bringing
her here in the first place or by your keeping her here. No one
thinks scandal of what a foreigner does. People simply say they are
crazy--that is the end of it. She will be forgotten in a week. That
would be much more comfortable for all of you than to have to keep
explaining her presence."
"You will tire yourself if you talk too much," remonstrated the
younger woman. "It is not good for your sickness."
"What do I care what is good for my sickness?" exclaimed the
t'ai-t'ai. "I am going to die anyway. I shall have plenty of time
to be silent then."
"You mustn't say such things," spoke out the other, pretending to be
shocked. "You are not going to die. This cold that you are
suffering from, that will soon pass. You have lived too long to be
snuffed out by the first winter gale."
"Don't you think this is a time to be honest?" asked her mother.
The other woman avoided an answer.
"Are you going to let her go, as I asked you?" went on the old
t'ai-t'ai.
"Oh, there will be plenty of time to talk of that presently. This is
no occasion to discuss such important plans. It's not for me to
decide, anyway, what we ought to do with Nancy. That is for the
others to determine."
"What you decide, they too will decide."
"You must have your broth now," said the daughter, trying to make
light of the obstinate way her mother clung to her demands. "Why vex
yourself about these things now? To-morrow will be time enough for a
decision. There are so many things to be considered. It's no use
being too hasty."
"There is one thing to be considered, her happiness and yours. For
don't deceive yourself by thinking you will be happy if you keep the
girl. We can't flaunt our spite in the face of heaven. And I tell
you this marriage is against heaven itself; I have seen and I know.
And everyone who has anything to do with it is cursed. What happened
to her father? He died, the day of her marriage. And before another
year is out, if you keep her here, you will be dead too. Are you
going to release her or are you going to force me back from the dead
to set her free? You have found me a stubborn old woman in life and
you will find me more stubborn in death."
Not only had the voice of the sick woman gained its full power, but
the old magical ascendancy of her will had asserted its strength.
Her threat stirred the superstitious heart of her daughter. The
boldness which had been gaining ground at the expense of her mother's
weakness retreated again before a fear she did not know how to
dispel, a vague intangible fear, here one minute, there the next,
always eluding her when she tried to grapple with it, when she tried
to laugh it down, the fear that a curse did in truth lie heavy upon
Nancy's marriage to Ming-te. She remembered with terror how they had
labored to straighten out Herrick's stiffened limbs.
"When do you want us to send her away?" she asked, after a sullen
pause.
"When she asks to go," answered the t'ai-t'ai.
The daughter ransacked her mind for some pretext to avoid a promise,
but she knew her mother too well of old, knew that she was not easily
hoodwinked when she wanted a direct answer.
"Ah well, it can't be helped," she said finally. "If you really
order me to do this, what can I do but obey? I will not keep her
here. I will send her off."
The old woman gave a sigh of relief and said no more. The task of
overriding her daughter, short and sharp though it had been, had cost
too much of her strength. She had summoned every atom of her
indomitable will to cower her adversary into making this unwilling
promise. She had spoken as though the fortunes of life and death, of
heaven and hell, were in her hands, and so extensive had been her
mastery of this grumbling family that even the self-willed daughter
flinched from the shadow of her curse. But her strength was failing;
she knew how much had been spent in this passionate plea for Nancy;
in her hour of weakness they might lose their dread of her temper,
grow bold like village mongrels round a dying wolf. She lay quiet,
husbanding what force remained, determined to keep her lifelong spell
hard upon them to the end.
Her daughter felt it was safe to leave the patient for an hour. She
got into long discussion with Nancy's mother-in-law over the promise
which had been wrung out of her by the t'ai-t'ai. They talked the
matter to and fro, back and forth, nosing out ways to evade the
spirit while they kept the letter of this pledge. Away from the sick
room, in the still cold sunshine which had followed the storm, the
death of the old lady who had ruled them so long did not really seem
so near at hand as to alarm them. Nor did it seem so in the sick
room itself when Nancy appeared and found the t'ai-t'ai apparently
resting.
Nancy felt stronger after her sleep and could not understand that her
mistress had not been refreshed at the same time. When the sick
woman said, "Death is a slow business," the girl was inclined to
treat the remark lightly. The house seemed comfortingly peaceful
after the wind which had been raging round the courtyards and tearing
tiles loose from the eaves.
But the doctor, when he came, was not so well satisfied. He looked
at the thermometer, and he shook his head.
"You have been exerting yourself," he said; "there is more fever here
than there should be."
"Of course there is fever," scoffed the patient; "how can one be sick
and not have fever?"
As for exerting herself, she laughed at the notion. What exertion
could an old woman make when she was kept tied to her bed?
"Did you think I would jump up and play shuttlecock like a schoolboy?"
She dismissed the subject of her infirmities. "Have you brought
him?" she asked.
The doctor knew whom she meant. "Yes, I brought him," he said, "but
I am not sure it would be good for you to see him."
"It would not be good for me not to see him."
"Very well, have your own way," consented the doctor, humoring her
stubbornness, "but don't go wasting your strength with too many
words."
He went to the door and called Ronald, who had been waiting in a room
outside. Nancy, standing at the opposite side of the bed, looked at
the newcomer. She had not expected him. Her face flushed with
embarrassment. She dared not lift her eyes again, but tried quietly
to withdraw from the room.
"No, you must stay," said the t'ai-t'ai, who had observed her
confusion with a swift glance. "I may need you to explain what I
wish to say."
Then she turned her attention to Ronald, giving him a long exacting
stare. It was evident she did not quite know how to appraise him.
She was not used to foreigners, for Nancy, although she spoke of her
theoretically as a Westerner, in the intimacy of her affection she
always regarded as Chinese. So she faltered for a moment at her
first sight of Ronald, vaguely disappointed, till she saw that he was
transparently honest and kind and that he loved Nancy; then she took
refuge in Timothy Herrick's judgment,--who, after all, was better
able than he to judge a man of his own race?--and thought, with an
inward chuckle, that if the gods themselves had come to claim Nancy
she would not have deemed the wisest and the handsomest of them good
enough.
She looked again at Nancy's blushing face.
"Ha, my child tenderly displays the reflection of the sun," she
quoted, in a voice too low for any but Nancy to hear, and laughed
contentedly to see the girl blush even more. "Never mind, never
mind, tut, tut, tut, tut, it is good to be young. I won't ask you to
translate for me."
This office she imposed upon the doctor.
"Tell him," she said, "that Nancy is free to go. I am the head of
this family and I have given my permission, and I have the promise of
her stepmother for the rest of them, and I have her own promise that
she will go. This marriage was a mistake. We disobeyed heaven when
we made it. I have learned some things I did not know before--he
ought to understand what I mean--and I cannot die with peace in my
heart until I have set this mistake right. Is that clear?"
It was entirely clear.
"She can go this very minute; that would be the best plan," said the
old t'ai-t'ai playfully. "Will you go now, Nancy?"
Nancy shook her head back and forth quickly like a punished child
refusing to be good.
"There, you see," exclaimed the woman, half jesting, half sorry, "you
see how stubborn and self-willed she is. Now that I have become old
and helpless even she won't obey me."
A deep silence followed, during which everyone seemed wondering what
to say.
"No, it's no use," went on the t'ai-t'ai at last, "I've tried my
hardest to persuade her to go. But she refuses. She must wait till
I am dead. He will stay in Paoling?" she asked anxiously.
"Yes," the doctor answered for Ronald.
"Good. He will not need to wait long."
Even the doctor, cheerful as he had been, was not brave enough to
contradict her with a lie. He had directed Nancy in all that she
could do--all that anyone could do, now, he thought to himself.
Promising to return early in the morning, he took Ronald away with
him.
Ronald could not speak. His brain carried a picture of the marvelous
old woman lying shrunken and helpless on the couch, her face burning
with fever, her eyes, wistful and bright, searching him for every
sign that he was fit to marry Nancy. The girl he loved so utterly
seemed almost a shadow in comparison; he had only ghostlike glimpses
of her averted face. With a deep groan he wondered if he were ever
going to win her.
As soon as the doctor had left, Nancy's stepmother and her
mother-in-law came to inquire what he had said, but the t'ai-t'ai did
not encourage them to stay. She was doing as well as one could hope,
she told them; she was tired and did not want to talk. She knew that
her daughter would be filled with curiosity about Ronald's visit, but
she would explain nothing, only asking to be left alone, with Nancy
watching her.
Ronald's appearance had indeed excited the stepmother, who remembered
him angrily as Herrick's executor. She hated him because of the
trust that had been shown him by her husband, the powers that had
been given him in her rightful place.
"So that's the game!" she exclaimed. "That's what the shameless girl
has been working for, is it? That's why she has turned my poor old
mother's head and made her play the fool in her dotage!"
She choked in her wrath.
"Fancy her cunning in getting that meddlesome barbarian here. Who
ever heard the like to her treachery? And he, not satisfied with
stealing our money, now dares to steal our wives out of our houses."
She raved in her hatred of Nancy. Every grudge she could rake up
from the past, every quarrel Nancy had had with Li-an, every childish
offense went into a score which, if she had dared, she would have
torn the girl limb from limb to erase. "That miserable promise!" she
kept repeating, vexing herself half mad to find ways of breaking it.
The victim of her hatred stood profoundly quiet beside the bed of the
dying woman. The latter had heaved a great sigh when she found
herself at last with only Nancy watching her.
"I have done all I can," she said. "Your life is in your own hands
now, my jewel. If I were only strong enough to take you away from
here with my own arms--I am so afraid for you, I am still so afraid
for you. But I can do no more. I am no good. I am too old."
These were the first despondent words Nancy had ever heard her proud
old mistress use. She dared not weep, but sat down and put her hand
on the sick woman's forehead, trying to cool the heat of the fever,
to repay something of the debt of gentle caresses she owed.
"Sing to me," said the t'ai-t'ai at last.
Of all the songs she knew, Nancy could think of none but the song
Kuei-lien had sung to her the night before her wedding. It had gone
ringing through her head for days afterward and now, when she knew
but would not confess her mistress was dying, nothing else could so
contain her fear and her love.
Nancy's voice was not Kuei-lien's. It was more closely a child's
voice, artless, straightforward, and simple, but she sang very
clearly, very tenderly, till even the candles seemed to stop
flickering and the old woman shut her eyes, letting her mind drift
into contented reverie from the peace she got in knowing that Nancy
was near.
"Swift the summer sun in his day,
Swift the autumn moon in her night,
Slow the winter frost with its blight,
Trampling golden leaves from its way.
"Gold youth, scarlet love, each must fade,
Moon and stars cease shining in the night,
Winter snows shall long glimmer white,
Scarlet leaves and gold low are laid."
Nancy stopped. She wanted to hide her face again, but there was no
place to hide. She had to bear up for the sake of her friend. But
the song unloosed such overwhelming memories that she had to sit
speechless, tensely careful not to move lest she let free the tears
which were poised imminently behind the straining floodgates of her
eyes.
The t'ai-t'ai reached for her hand.
"I have lived seventy-three years," she said, "and in all those
seventy-three years this is the most peaceful moment I have known. I
don't want you to offer me anything else, child--incense, food,
money, I don't want them, nothing else but one thing, your happiness.
If you want me to rest, you must bring me that."
She sank back in the bed as if to sleep more comfortably. Her eyes
closed. Her mind seemed to slip away. The heat of the fever
mounted. Nancy busied herself with the expedients the doctor had
suggested, but they brought no relief. Again and again she begged
the sick woman to give some sign that she heard, but she got no
response. At last in despair she woke up her stepmother. The woman
came rushing in, half dressed, took one look.
"Ai, she is dying," she cried, and rushed out to call the family.
They had all come in readiness for the worst. It was only the work
of a few minutes before they were crowding round the bedside, weeping
in terror as they watched the old t'ai-t'ai's struggles for breath.
Their wailing filled the room, deafening the last pangs of the dying
woman.
Suddenly she sat bolt upright and looked round with the caustic look
they knew so well.
"Humbugs!" she snorted in a cold scornful voice which struck with
double sharpness on their ears because of the sudden hush in the
chamber. "Humbugs!"
Then she dropped back with a gasp on her pillow. The old t'ai-t'ai
had spoken her mind to the last.
There was a shameful pause, as though the family waited one of her
familiar scoldings and could not believe she was dead. Her eldest
son was the first to rouse himself. During the unspeakable silence
which still prevailed he got up slowly and lighted incense and white
candles beside the bed while everyone watched him, spellbound. Not
till the first spluttering glow of the candles could they move.
When at last they realized that the spirit of the old t'ai-t'ai was
being lighted on her way, they went mad. Everyone began shouting and
crying and tearing his hair; the women beat their breasts and forced
tears from their eyes. The room was not large enough to hold the
echo of their weeping. Yet in the midst of this paroxysm Nancy could
hear her name called. She looked round. Her stepmother was
beckoning to her. The others were so taken up by their own grief
that they paid no heed when Nancy stumbled over them to emerge from
the frenzied circle of mourners.
"I have some work for you to do," whispered her stepmother, giving
her orders about things she was to fetch.
Nancy stole out of the room unobserved and went blindly through the
dark house, hearing the din of the weeping family jangling across
every cold courtyard. She was too numb with sorrow to think about
herself or her own fate. She wanted to weep out her heart beside the
body of her mistress. Nothing else at this moment could satisfy her.
She found a candle and groped into the room to which her stepmother
had sent her. Suddenly she heard a noise and turned. Only a pace
behind her stood the woman herself. Nancy saw, with a frightened
glance, that she had no good intent in her mind; she saw her glaring,
like a panther ready to spring.
"I promised you should go," said the woman harshly, "and you're
going--now! You are not going back there, do you hear me? You are
not one of us, you don't belong to this family, and you shall not
weep with us just because you managed to addle the brains of my old
mother. You killed her. You are not fit for us to wipe our feet on.
Out you go, I say! Go and play the whore with your foreign friend!
You are a stench in our nostrils. You slut, you filthy tortoise, you
dirty bawd, what right have you to think you can go in there and
corrupt the dead with your false tears?"
Nancy was staggered by this abuse. It meant only one thing in her
mind, that she was being robbed of her place beside the body of her
protector. Her heart could not grasp the idea of being torn away
with this cruel, this unbelievable abruptness. She cared nothing for
herself, nothing for her own future; she would have bartered the
freedom of a lifetime just to be allowed to cling to that lifeless
body; she was lost to all reason; she sobbed for the privilege of
being close to her dead mistress as though more than her life hung
upon it. She could not believe that her stepmother was in earnest;
she could not believe that she, who had shared the golden beauty of
these last days in the company of her beloved old t'ai-t'ai, should
be driven away like an outcast, like a creature lower than the dogs
which slunk through the open doors. She opened her mouth in protest,
ready to offer herself as a slave, but the woman fetched her a
stinging blow across the lips.
"Your words have done enough mischief in this house," she jeered. "I
won't hear more of them."
Nancy drew back. The candle shook in her hand, throwing ominous,
weird shadows across her face. She was an animal which has been
wounded and does not know the meaning of the violence dealt to it.
Then from far away, like a rising gust of wind, came the dismal
lamentation of the mourners. With a start Nancy dropped the candle.
An overpowering impulse seized her to rush back, back to her
mistress, to throw herself on the floor, to throw herself on the
ground by the bed, and to weep. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else
must stand in her way. She was mad. She was indeed an animal, an
animal trapped, beating out its life in its panic to get the one
thing it desired.
She tried to rush past her stepmother, but there was light enough
from the dim lantern by the door to keep the woman from being taken
unawares.
"No, you don't go back," she shrieked, "not a step do you go back.
Out you go, I say, out! out! out!"
She seized the girl with her hands, clawing her face, tearing her
hair. She was as mad as Nancy and stronger, and she had her
sister-in-law to help her. The latter had grabbed Nancy's arms and
was pulling them back till the pain shot like tongues of flame
through her tortured body. Inch by inch they strained toward the
door, fighting with teeth and nails and feet, their breath, too spent
for words, coming and going in convulsive gasps.
Nancy writhed and twisted to get out of the grasp of her tormentors,
insensible to more pain, the need to get back to the side of her dead
friend possessing her like a legion of devils. But the women were
more than she could stand against. Slowly they dragged her across
the floor; she contested every inch, but they beat down her strength,
they pommeled her and bruised her and tore her clothes into long
rags, they struck her across the head till she was almost senseless.
Desperately she struggled, but uselessly, for the stepmother grasped
her throat with sinewy hands and, pressing tighter and tighter,
stifled her till her eyes were ready to leap from their sockets and
her lungs choked vainly for air. Then they opened the great gate,
swinging it wide on its creaking axles, and flung the girl, like a
heap of discarded rubbish, into the street.
She was not dead. The cold air forced itself at the price of agony
down her throat. The blood began moving again. But her mind had
still one single insane thought, to get back to the deathbed, so as
soon as she was able to pull herself up she plunged against the
barred door, throwing herself again and again upon its unyielding
boards, crying, as she thought, with a voice which could be heard for
miles, but which actually was only the hoarse rattle of a whisper.
She did not think of Ronald or of anything else. She forgot the iron
cold clamping its grip on her veins, chains of steely frost from
which no prisoner, once bound, could escape. She wanted to get back
to her mistress, back to her mistress or to die. And what the women
had begun she was in a fair way to complete when a sudden spell of
weariness halted her, a spell of deep warm peace. She felt the hand
of the old t'ai-t'ai on her shoulder.
"Do you care?" she heard her voice saying. "Ah, my child, my child,
why do you care?"
It was all right now. She could sleep and be comforted.