Mei said: “He is ill-bred. He learns his manners from the men on the farm.”
Winter Cherry added: “And the animals.”
Mooi-tsai asked: “What did he mean by the words ‘palace attitude’? I did not understand. And when I fell on my back he said it again. Did he mean anything?”
“Nothing that you ought to understand,” Winter Cherry told her. “Come—we must put the room in order again before our mother sees it. Did he hurt you when he pushed you with his foot?”
Mooi-tsai shook her head and joined in tidying up. She was still puzzling over her brother’s words, and decided to ask her mother at the earliest opportunity what they meant.
In Chang-an, towards the far end of East Street, past the food-shops and silk-cutters’ establishments which served their immediate needs, the three Blue Houses stood side by side separated only by narrow passages leading to gardens and stabling behind them. Mother Feng ruled (as far as she was allowed) over the middle house of the three. On a clear morning just after the period when Hoar Frost Descends, Honeysuckle could see from their high room clear over the low buildings at the opposite side of the street, away to distant hills about which she sometimes made poetry which she never wrote down.
Just now, Mother Feng’s form broke the view, and Clear Rain, waking lazily, heard Honeysuckle saying: “If you will allow me to see my favourite view of the hills as well as yourself, Mother Feng, I shall do my best to listen carefully to what you have to say.”
Mother Feng cleared her throat, as if at an audience, and then, irritated that she should have done so, replied: “I brought you the message because the priest who brought it gave me money to take it to you personally. Money is not so easy to come by, these days, where rebels take for nothing what men used to pay for in good, bright silver.”
Honeysuckle asked: “What was the message?”
Mother Feng replied: “That, he would only give you himself.”
Clear Rain laughed. “Then he has paid you for nothing,” she said. “Tell the priest to come to us. Is he a follower of The Way, or merely a follower of Fo?”
“I do not know,” Mother Feng answered. “I shall give him your message. Then you can ask him yourself. But priests do not wash much, and you may not enjoy it. I . . .”
“Let him come,” Honeysuckle broke in. “He can always go again.”
Mother Feng went out.
When the priest came, they saw at once that he was a follower of Lao Tze, whose Way has puzzled some and been an excuse to many. He sat down on the floor without speaking. His hair was carelessly wound round on the top of his head and stuck through with a long wooden pin. Bright, deep eyes shone in a lean, lined face: his fingers were long and dark.
The two girls looked at him in silence.
“With regard to women,” the priest said, looking straight in front of him, “I follow the philosopher Chuang-Tzu.”
Honeysuckle observed brightly: “That was, I suppose, entirely due to your mother.”
The priest’s eyes opened wide with joy, and he said: “Here is one after my own heart! I speak to her of philosophy and she turns it to a pedigree. If I had given her a pedigree, would she have become philosophical?”
Clear Rain rose to her feet and stretched herself lazily.
“Other men,” she said, “bring rich presents in return for the privilege of listening to us. One can only conclude, therefore, that what we say is valuable. Yet here you are enjoying it without making a return.”
The priest replied: “Chuang-Tzu, waking after a dream in which he thought himself a butterfly, wondered whether his dream were the reality and he the dream. So fickle and evanescent are thoughts, dreams, and also the words with which these dreams are shared. And, if words be dreams, then it is three stanzas of dreams that I have brought with me. These dreams were written by a young man who paid me money to deliver them, apparently thinking them worth this outlay. But he gave me no other money with which I might have arranged for the further transport of these words to the lady to whom they were addressed. This places me in a quandary, and a quandary is not only bad for the digestion, but upsetting for the soul. You must solve it yourselves.”
Honeysuckle replied: “You spoke of a young lady to whom your dreams were addressed. Unless you tell us the name of this lady and produce the dreams of which you spoke, then indeed we shall be wagging our tails in the mud, like the tortoise that disliked responsibility.”
Clear Rain corrected her: “Tail. There was but one tortoise.”
The priest said: “I see that you both know the Books, and will no longer conceal from you that the name of the lady’s family is Peng, and her given name is Winter Cherry. Here are the deceptive lines.”
He took from his sleeve a crumpled piece of paper and gave it to Honeysuckle. Then he rose to his feet and said: “To speak words at parting is a weak confession.”
As he was going out, Clear Rain called after him: “Yet you have spoken them. Besides, may we know your name?”
He replied: “I am called the Guardian of the Hidden Spring,” and went out at last.
Honeysuckle opened the paper.
Ah Lai had written:
The priest who brings this travels to the North and then to Chang-an. If you go to the farm at Ma Wei, I am sure that you will he treated with hospitality. This on the back is for Winter Cherry. I can never think of you without hearing the rustling of water-lilies.
Clear Rain commented: “Is this not more your affair than mine, sister? After all, I hardly saw the boy when I was there.”
“And I,” Honeysuckle replied, turning the paper over, “am not, it seems, the object of this exceedingly erudite poem, for it is addressed to the girl Winter Cherry, whom I last saw wearing her short hair without particular distinction. Listen to this.”
She read:
Clear Rain sniffed: “A gardener’s catalogue of hum-drum events, bereft of unexpected charm.”
Honeysuckle replied: “Apart from the purely instructive part, it seems promising. From what I know of him, that young man will have some difficulty in living up to his professions. From what I know of him, his backwardness in deeds may prove hard to forgive, when he writes words like these. But he is a pleasant youth, and no doubt practice will narrow down the space betwixt promise and performance.”