When the others had left them, Winter Cherry said: “I am sure that my father has told you all that you could wish to know.”
Lu-shan answered: “No, since he does not know it. Come, there is nothing to be afraid of. Forget for a little while who I am: tell me in your own words the story of what happened here. Now, I know that the Lady Yang came earlier, with some boy or other, and that when the late Emperor arrived he called for her. Go on from there.”
Winter Cherry asked: “But why should I tell you? She is dead, and what she did before she died does not matter to you. Besides . . .”
He broke in: “Tell me what happened; do not ask me why I desire to know. Girl, I have means to make people talk. You would not have thus refused to tell the late Emperor. Now that I am Emperor, you must tell me. I am being very patient. Or, if you need a reason—for women are unreasonable enough to want that—let it suffice that I knew her when I first came to Court. She was kind to me. Is that a reason enough for you?”
She replied, fearing him: “I must take it as a reason. But I do not know how she came to hang herself.”
He cried: “She hanged herself? But they told me she was taken out and ridden down by the soldiers! What is this nonsense?”
Winter Cherry told him: “They had intended to do so, and I, who did not know of her hanging, dressed myself in her clothes and went out towards the soldiers, so that they would kill me and let her live. But Han Im went to her room and found her dead. So he cut her down and took her out to where I was, and I do not remember more, until I found myself on Han Im’s saddle on the way back here.”
“It is easy to see what Han Im did,” Lu-shan said, moodily. “And why he did it. But there are two questions which you have not answered.”
She replied: “I do not know the answers.”
Lu-shan said: “Since I have not yet asked the questions, how can that be? Listen—first, why did she hang herself? Second, why did you try to take her place?”
She said: “I do not know the answer to your first question, and to the second I can only say that the Emperor loved her, and I desired to serve the Emperor.”
“Show me where she died,” he commanded.
When they had gone to this other room, she told him: “She died here, Han Im said. There is the top part of the bowstring, still on the rafter. He thought that, unless he left it, the Emperor would not believe that she had hanged herself. Han Im said that she must have died at once—that her neck was broken. Now, may I go, please?”
Before they came out of the room Lu-shan rolled the porcelain stool from the corner, climbed upon it and untied the remainder of the bowstring. He coiled it up and put it in an inner pocket of his clothing.
Winter Cherry said: “She stood upon that stool to hang herself.”
Lu-shan rolled the stool back in the corner, and they went together out into the courtyard.
“Where is she buried?” he asked.
“It was not possible to bury her,” Winter Cherry replied.
From the courtyard where they stood they could hear shouting which seemed to be coming from the little garden by the summer-house. Clear Rain ran towards them.
“Stop them! They are killing each other!” she cried.
When he reached the garden Lu-shan saw Honeysuckle standing in the summerhouse with An Ching-hsu near her, sword in his hand. There was blood upon the blade of the sword, and below him, half in the water of the stream, Peng Chan-mu by in an untidy heap. The slow water of the stream was not now colourless over its white pebbles.
Lu-shan said: “I called you a diplomatist, and yet it would seem that you can behave like any Chinese. Can you not yet take your women without making a mess?”
Winter Cherry had come up beside him. She gasped when she saw her brother’s body, and at once realised all the possibilities.
“You must go at once,” she said. “If you do not, my father will want to fight with you, which would be foolish, and my grandfather, seeing now no second generation to tend the tombs—I do not know what he would do. Go quickly, before they come and find out. I have nothing more to tell you, so there is no reason for your staying and making further trouble and sorrow for all of us.”
An Lu-shan said: “Clean your sword and put it up. Then come with me. You have no more wisdom than your mother had. It is not thus that one may rule a country of philosophers. Quickly! And you, too,” he added to Winter Cherry.
She dared not try to make him change his mind. All three went through the courtyard to the doorway. Clear Rain was nowhere to be seen. Lu-shan put Winter Cherry in his own carriage. An Ching-hsu followed in the second.
“Leave the other,” Lu-shan ordered, and they moved off.
Father Peng turned his face to the wall. “I do not wish to see any of my family,” he said. “Although I have a son, that son has no son, and my father’s tomb and his father’s tomb must go untended on the hill side when my son is dead, and the hares and wild foxes will walk over our tombs and the weather will slowly cross out the names upon those tombs, and the wind and the worms will conspire together so that by and by there will be nothing of those tombs but a smooth place, and the heels of men will raise dust upon them.”
Peng Yeh said: “But . . .”
Father Peng cried in a loud voice: “Leave me!”
Outside the Lady of the Tapestry said: “He cannot be left like that. Old men die so easily when their hearts seem broken, that I fear to leave him as he says. But if we go in again he will be angry as well as heartbroken, and anger is as bad for an old man’s life as is sorrow. Alas!
Alas, I do not know what to do.”
Honeysuckle said: “You will forgive me for having overheard what you have just said. But, if it is a question of funeral songs, the one which you have just quoted is chanted only at the graves of common men. The Dew on the Garlic Leaf. . .”
Peng Yen turned sharply on his heel and left them.
The Lady of the Tapestry cried: “Alas, my son is dead and my husband does not know what to do. I know that his honourable father will certainly die from sorrow if he is left thus with his face to the wall. Aiya!”
Clear Rain, who had come up, said softly: “Let Honeysuckle go in to him. He is old and therefore courteous, and will feel compelled to talk with her. It may be that he will hate her, but if he talks he will not die. Prepare a bowl of hot broth and send it in by your youngest daughter. He will not blame her for disobeying his orders. The old are always absurdly tolerant of the young.”
Honeysuckle looked at the Lady of the Tapestry and the Lady of the Tapestry nodded assent. Honeysuckle went in through the dark door into the darker room.
“I am not of your family,” Honeysuckle said, “and therefore I am bold to enter. Further, the trouble was of my making, though not my intentional making, and though your son’s son has ridden on the Dragon, there is that in my hostess’ face and in her bearing which seems to me to say that the period which seems to have been set at the end of today’s sentence may after all turn out to be a comma.”