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.