Hung Lou Meng, or, the Dream of the Red Chamber Volume Ii Part 95

"This is strange!" Tai-yu laughed. "I was really speaking quite thoughtlessly; for who ever knows what's going on in your apartments?

But why do you, instead of getting here a little earlier to listen to old stories, come at this moment to bring trouble and vexation upon your own self?"

Pao-yu gave a laugh. "Let's have a meeting to-morrow," he proposed, "for we've also got the themes. Let's sing the narcissus and allspice."

"Never mind, drop that!" Tai-yu rejoined, upon hearing his proposal. "I can't venture to write any more verses. Whenever I indite any, I'm mulcted. So I'd rather not be put to any great shame."

While uttering these words she screened her face with both hands.

"What's the matter?" Pao-yu smiled. "Why are you again making fun of me?

I'm not afraid of any shame, but, lo, you screen your face."

"The next time," Pao-ch'ai felt impelled to interpose laughingly, "I convene a meeting, we'll have four themes for odes and four for songs; and each one of us will have to write four odes and four roundelays. The theme of the first ode will treat of the plan of the great extreme; the rhyme fixed being 'hsien,' (first), and the metre consisting of five words in each line. We'll have to exhaust every one of the rhymes under 'hsien,' and mind, not a single one may be left out."

"From what you say," Pao-ch'in smilingly observed, "it's evident that you're not in earnest, cousin, in setting the club on foot. It's clear enough that your object is to embarra.s.s people. But as far as the verses go, we could forcibly turn out a few, just by higgledy-piggledy taking several pa.s.sages from the 'Canon of Changes,' and inserting them in our own; but, after all, what fun will there be in that sort of thing? When I was eight years of age, I went with my father to the western seaboard to purchase foreign goods. Who'd have thought it, we came across a girl from the 'Chen Chen' kingdom. She was in her eighteenth year, and her features were just like those of the beauties one sees represented in foreign pictures. She had also yellow hair, hanging down, and arranged in endless plaits. Her whole head was ornamented with one ma.s.s of cornelian beads, amber, cats' eyes, and 'grandmother-green-stone.' On her person, she wore a chain armour plaited with gold, and a coat, which was up to the very sleeves, embroidered in foreign style. In a belt, she carried a j.a.panese sword, also inlaid with gold and studded with precious gems. In very truth, even in pictures, there is no one as beautiful as she. Some people said that she was thoroughly conversant with Chinese literature, and could explain the 'Five cla.s.sics,' that she was able to write odes and devise roundelays, and so my father requested an interpreter to ask her to write something. She thereupon wrote an original stanza, which all, with one voice, praised for its remarkable beauty, and extolled for its extraordinary merits."

"My dear cousin," eagerly smiled Pao-yu, "produce what she wrote, and let's have a look at it."

"It's put away in Nanking;" Pao-ch'in replied with a smile. "So how could I at present go and fetch it?"

Great was Pao-yu's disappointment at this rejoinder. "I've no luck," he cried, "to see anything like this in the world."

Tai-yu laughingly laid hold of Pao-ch'in. "Don't be humbugging us!" she remarked. "I know well enough that you are not likely, on a visit like this, to have left any such things of yours at home. You must have brought them along. Yet here you are now again palming off a fib on us by saying that you haven't got them with you. You people may believe what she says, but I, for my part, don't."

Pao-ch'in got red in the face. Drooping her head against her chest, she gave a faint smile; but she uttered not a word by way of response.

"Really P'in Erh you've got into the habit of talking like this!"

Pao-ch'ai laughed. "You're too shrewd by far."

"Bring them along," Tai-yu urged with a smile, "and give us a chance of seeing something and learning something; it won't hurt them."

"There's a whole heap of trunks and baskets," Pao-ch'ai put in laughing, "which haven't been yet cleared away. And how could one tell in which particular one, they're packed up? Wait a few days, and when things will have been put straight a bit, we'll try and find them: and every one of us can then have a look at them; that will be all right. But if you happen to remember the lines," she pursued, speaking to Pao-ch'in, "why not recite them for our benefit?"

"I remember so far that her lines consisted of a stanza with five characters in each line," Pao-ch'ai returned for answer. "For a foreign girl, they're verily very well done."

"Don't begin for a while," Pao-ch'ai exclaimed. "Let me send for Yun Erh, so that she too might hear them."

After this remark, she called Hsiao Lo to her. "Go to my place," she observed, "and tell her that a foreign beauty has come over, who's a splendid hand at poetry. 'You, who have poetry on the brain,' (say to her), 'are invited to come and see her,' and then lay hold of this verse-maniac of ours and bring her along."

Hsiao Lo gave a smile, and went away. After a long time, they heard Hsiang-yun laughingly inquire, "What foreign beauty has come?" But while asking this question, she made her appearance in company with Hsiang Ling.

"We heard your voices long before we caught a glimpse of your persons!"

the party laughed.

Pao-ch'in and her companions motioned to her to sit down, and, in due course, she reiterated what she had told them a short while back.

"Be quick, out with it! Let's hear what it is!" Hsiang-yun smilingly cried.

Pao-ch'in thereupon recited:

Last night in the Purple Chamber I dreamt.

This evening on the 'Shui Kuo' Isle I sing.

The clouds by the isle cover the broad sea.

The zephyr from the peaks reaches the woods.

The moon has never known present or past.

From shallow and deep causes springs love's fate.

When I recall my springs south of the Han, Can I not feel disconsolate at heart?

After listening to her, "She does deserve credit," they unanimously shouted, "for she really is far superior to us, Chinese though we be."

But scarcely was this remark out of their lips, when they perceived She Yueh walk in. "Madame w.a.n.g," she said, "has sent a servant to inform you, Master Secundus, that 'you are to go at an early hour to-morrow morning to your maternal uncle's, and that you are to explain to him that her ladyship isn't feeling quite up to the mark, and that she cannot pay him a visit in person.'"

Pao-yu precipitately jumped to his feet (out of deference to his mother), and signified his a.s.sent, by answering 'Yes.' He then went on to inquire of Pao-ch'ai and Pao-ch'in, "Are you two going?"

"We're not going," Pao-ch'ai rejoined. "We simply went there yesterday to take our presents over but we left after a short chat."

Pao-yu thereupon pressed his female cousins to go ahead and he then followed them. But Tai-yu called out to him again and stopped him. "When is Hsi Jen, after all, coming back?" she asked.

"She'll naturally come back after she has accompanied the funeral,"

Pao-yu retorted.

Tai-yu had something more she would have liked to tell him, but she found it difficult to shape it into words. After some moments spent in abstraction, "Off with you!" she cried.

Pao-yu too felt that he treasured in his heart many things he would fain confide to her, but he did not know what to bring to his lips, so after cogitating within himself for a time, he likewise observed smilingly: "We'll have another chat to-morrow," and, as he said so, he wended his way down the stairs. Lowering his head, he was just about to take a step forward, when he twisted himself round again with alacrity. "Now that the nights are longer than they were, you're sure to cough often and wake several times in the night; eh?" he asked.

"Last night," Tai-yu answered, "I was all right; I coughed only twice.

But I only slept at the fourth watch for a couple of hours and then I couldn't close my eyes again."

"I really have something very important to tell you," Pao-yu proceeded with another smile. "It only now crossed my mind." Saying this, he approached her and added in a confidential tone: "I think that the birds' nests sent to you by cousin Pao-chai...."

Barely, however, had he had time to conclude than he spied dame Chao enter the room to pay Tai-yu a visit. "Miss, have you been all right these last few days?" she inquired.

Tai-yu readily guessed that this was an attention extended to her merely as she had, on her way back from T'an Ch'un's quarters, to pa.s.s by her door, so speedily smiling a forced smile, she offered her a seat.

"Many thanks, dame Chao," she said, "for the trouble of thinking of me, and for coming in person in this intense cold."

Hastily also bidding a servant pour the tea, she simultaneously winked at Pao-yu.

Pao-yu grasped her meaning, and forthwith quitted the apartment. As this happened to be about dinner time, and he had been enjoined as well by Madame w.a.n.g to be back at an early hour, Pao-yu returned to his quarters, and looked on while Ch'ing Wen took her medicine. Pao-yu did not desire Ch'ing Wen this evening to move into the winter apartment, but stayed with Ch'ing Wen outside; and, giving orders to bring the warming-frame near the winter apartment, She Yueh slept on it.

Nothing of any interest worth putting on record transpired during the night. On the morrow, before the break of day, Ch'ing Wen aroused She Yueh.

"You should awake," she said. "The only thing is that you haven't had enough sleep. If you go out and tell them to get the water for tea ready for him, while I wake him, it will be all right."

She Yueh immediately jumped up and threw something over her. "Let's call him to get up and dress in his fine clothes." she said. "We can summon them in, after this fire-box has been removed. The old nurses told us not to allow him to stay in this room for fear the virus of the disease should pa.s.s on to him; so now if they see us bundled up together in one place, they're bound to kick up another row."

"That's my idea too," Ch'ing Wen replied.

The two girls were then about to call him, when Pao-yu woke up of his own accord, and speedily leaping out of bed, he threw his clothes over him.