“Her breath is feeble,” the doctor said, “and her pulse is like the wing of a butterfly in winter, when it has come out of a warm corner. She is very cold. If you can get her to drink a little hot broth, there may be a chance. Of course, although it is not my business to ask, my eyes could not fail to notice the bloodstained garments upon the floor.” He hesitated, and then said again: “It is not any of my business.”
Honeysuckle took some silver from a box and paid the doctor.
“You are quite right in what you have just said,” she replied, and the doctor went away looking very puzzled.
Then Honeysuckle and Clear Rain started to warm Winter Cherry and by-and-by the girl opened her lips far enough for a few drops of soup to enter.
Clear Rain observed: “It is quite an unusual experience to have three people in the same bed under such a pile of clothing that we, at least, are sweating as if we had run to the Palace ourselves instead of sending the horses. But it was a pity that we went to Ma Wei. Let this be a lesson to you, sister, not to carry the virtue of thrift too far, but next time to hire a proper messenger.”
“She is not so unpleasantly like a fish now,” Honeysuckle said.
The girl, Winter Cherry, was well enough in body to be taken home to the estate of her father towards the end of the second moon, and, two days after the festival of Clear Brightness which is the first day of the third moon, Honeysuckle and Clear Rain hired two carrying chairs with old and respectable men to carry them, setting out on the road to Ma Wei when the sun had only shown a quarter of his width above the horizon. When the Lady of the Tapestry had greeted them, she sent for her husband, excusing this unconventional behaviour with a quiet smile.
“After all,” she said, “not your doings nor my daughter’s seem to have been much ruled by convention.”
The two girls politely agreed with her, sitting on the edges of their stools and looking towards the door.
When Peng Yeh entered he, too, greeted them in a manner which they had not expected.
“I owe to you two girls the body of my daughter,” he said, “and therefore if in my speech to you I seem to speak as one who sees before him members of his own family, you will pardon what might seem to be discourtesy.”
Honeysuckle asked: “How is she?”
The Lady of the Tapestry replied: “She eats and sleeps and does all the other things which one would expect of a child. She came with us all on the feast two days ago to visit our family tombs and did there all the ceremonial performance which is necessary. My husband’s father was very much impressed by her behaviour. But with all this, she has only spoken once, and I did not hear her. It was the youngest, Mooi-tsai, who was near the summerhouse when she heard it. Shall I send for the child?”
But, as she spoke, the door darkened and Father Peng came in, followed by his two granddaughters, Mei and Mooi-tsai. Honeysuckle and Clear Rain rose to their feet with the rest and made low bows. Father Peng returned the bows, sat down on the stool which Mooi-tsai brought for him, and bade them all be seated.
“I am indeed glad,” Father Peng said, “that you two ladies have come, giving us the rare opportunity of hearing through not too many successive mouths what may be happening outside our rustic world. Here, everything is regulated by the seasons, and there lacks here that due information of unexpected activities which serve as sauce to our lives.”
Honeysuckle replied: “We are indeed grateful, sir, for the opportunity of seeing for ourselves that you are in the best of health. As for news, the capital is full of it, but whether it be reliable news or news which, as you yourself said, has passed through too many mouths to be readily believed, is a matter which a querulous person might dispute. You have probably heard much, but so far as certain facts are concerned one can only say that the Heir Apparent allowed himself to be proclaimed Emperor and that later, some time after the Bright Emperor had reached his present, remote palace in Cheng-tu, he, too, was graciously pleased to proclaim the same thing. There are, of course, further tales of the generals and armies of both sides, who pursue and are pursued probably nearly as much as public credulity would credit. But nothing is decisive. I should have said that nothing was decisive until, in the first moon of this year, the rebel An Lu-shan was slain by his rebel son. Nevertheless, it makes but little difference to us girls which rebel may sit temporarily upon the Dragon Throne.”
Clear Rain said: “An Lu-shan burnt the ancestral temple and the tablets of the Emperor.”
The old man seemed to be digesting this news, and Peng Yeh said: “It will solve itself in time. Here, as my father has said, we have little news with which to regale you.”
Father Peng asked: “Of what were you speaking before I came in?”
The Lady of the Tapestry replied: “Our visitors were very kindly enquiring after the health of our eldest daughter, and I was about to send for the little Mooi-tsai here, in order to discover what were the only words which our eldest daughter spoke on the occasion when the child overheard her in the summerhouse.” Father Peng said: “Tell us, child.”
Mooi-tsai answered: “She said: ‘We must be going now.’ That is all I heard.”
Clear Rain, having observed that no one else was going to speak immediately, observed: “There is clearly hope for her mind. She must have received a shock and a sorrow such as we have not been able to discover.”
Mei asked: “Is it permitted that I should speak?” Then, seeing this permission in their faces, she went on: “My sister has a folded piece of paper which she will allow no one to take away from her, a piece of paper which she unfolds and seems to read, but which she folds up and puts back into her inner pocket if she thinks that anyone is watching her.”
Then Winter Cherry herself came in, looked round the room without change of face, and went out. They saw her pass across the courtyard towards the garden.
The Lady of the Tapestry said: “You must stay with us for the night. We owe you much. Mooi-tsai, see that the servants give food to the bearers and arrange for their bedding.”
“So you hold your court at sunrise,” Honeysuckle said, as she came towards Father Peng. “You will forgive me if I seem to forget myself so far as to speak first, but girls such as I are always ready to speak, to chatter in fact, perhaps in order to keep their minds off other matters.”
Father Peng glanced at the sun in the East, then at the long shadow of the summerhouse across the garden. His hands were inside the sleeves of his padded coat.
“From a creditor one does not look for apologies,” he returned. “No—you two girls have strayed far from your accustomed path in order to do a kindness to me and my family, and I feel that you have the right to speak first at a Court which, if I were a younger man, would take on an appearance difficult to explain in terms of the customary morning obeisance. Indeed, I begin to realise how much I have lost lately by my irrational retirement into seclusion: I see how foolish it is to assume that a dulling of the body’s fires should be followed by a flagging of mental flexibility. In fact, I have already derived much pleasure from the conversation which you two have provided. Also, we are grateful to you, as I have said.”
Honeysuckle, too, put her hands into her padded sleeves.
“There is a new sun-birth each day,” she said. “I am always glad to exchange my more usual activities for a turn as midwife.”
Father Peng took her up. “Arising from that,” he said, “I remember, too, when your presence brought me back from the grey depression which followed on my grandson’s death, by holding out a tenuous hope of his replacement.”