The Warning Voice (33 page)

‘There's all my stuff at your disposal,' said Xue Pan. ‘Help yourself. Give him a share of that.'

‘It isn't money or jewellery I'm after,' said Jia Lian. ‘It doesn't have to be anything valuable. Just give me something you carry about with you that I can take back with me as a token.'

‘At all events, I can't give you this sword,' said Xiang-lian. ‘I need it for self-defence. I have got another sword in my luggage I could let you have – well, two swords, really: it's a pair of swords in one scabbard, what they call a “Duck and Drake” sword. It's a family heirloom. I never use it, but I always carry it around with me. I could never bear to be parted from it for long, so however much I may wander, if you take that as my pledge, you can be sure of my eventually coming back to get it.'

He handed Jia Lian the heirloom when he had got it out of his bundle, and after a few more drinks the three men remounted, took leave of each other, and went their separate ways.

Er-jie had run the little household during his absence with exemplary circumspection. The courtyard gate had been kept shut and bolted all day and she had received no outside visitors. San-jie, too – a young woman who never did anything by halves – had continued as good as her word. When not actually keeping to her own room, she had spent the whole of the time either ministering to the wants of her mother or sitting and sewing with Er-jie. Jia Lian was gratified to find all these signs of prudent housekeeping on his return and his respect for Er-jie's wifely virtues increased.

When the greetings and routine questionings were over, he told the sisters about his encounter with Liu Xiang-lian, and
getting the Duck and Drake swords out of his luggage, he handed them to San-jie to take care of. San-jie first examined the scabbard. It was embossed with a design of interlacing dragons and sea-monsters and encrusted all over with jewels. Then she took out the swords, identical except that one had the character ‘Duck' and the other the character ‘Drake' engraved on its blade. And what blades! Cold, cruel; glittering with the cold brightness of autumn waters. San-jie was enraptured by them. She put them both back into their scabbard and carried them off to her own room, where she hung them up over her bed. Thereafter she would look up at them from time to time and smile, happy in the knowledge that now her future was assured.

After a couple of nights with Er-jie, Jia Lian went back to Rong-guo House to report to his father and to rejoin the other members of the family. He found Xi-feng with the rest. She had by now recovered sufficiently to get about and had resumed her duties as household manager. As soon as he could, he went to see Cousin Zhen and tell him about San-jie and Liu Xiang-lian. Cousin Zhen was lately much taken up with a new acquaintance and had lost his former interest in the You sisters. He therefore received Jia Lian's news with equanimity and seemed perfectly content to leave the matter in his hands, merely insisting on himself contributing thirty taels towards the expenses, since he feared that Jia Lian's resources might be inadequate. Jia Lian accepted the money and handed it to Er-jie to spend on San-jie's trousseau.

Round about the middle of the eighth month Xiang-lian arrived back in the capital and at once went to pay his respects to Aunt Xue and make the acquaintance of Xue Ke. He was told that Xue Pan had been ill in bed almost since the day he got back (some sickness brought on by change of water or the effects of travel) and was still under doctor's treatment. However, on hearing that Xiang-lian had come, Xue Pan insisted on having him brought into his bedroom. He and his mother, whose earlier resentment against Xiang-lian had been completely banished by her gratitude to him for saving her son's life, spoke eloquently of their indebtedness, and when the conversation turned to the subject of Xiang-lian's marriage,
they insisted that all the material things required for it should be supplied by them, so that he should have nothing to do himself except name the day. It was now Xiang-lian's turn to be grateful.

Next day Xiang-lian went to see Bao-yu. The two of them were always wonderfully at ease in each other's company and Xiang-lian felt sufficiently intimate to ask him confidentially about the circumstances of Jia Lian's second marriage.

‘I really don't know – beyond what Tealeaf has told me,' said Bao-yu. ‘I haven't been to see them. I don't really think it's my business. Tealeaf mentioned that Cousin Lian was very anxious to see you about something, but I don't know what it was.'

Xiang-lian told him about the various things that had happened to him on his travels, ending up with an account of his encounter with Jia Lian.

‘Congratulations!' said Bao-yu. ‘You are a lucky man. She's a ravishingly beautiful girl. The perfect match for a good-looking chap like you!'

‘If she is so beautiful,' said Xiang-lian, ‘there can be no shortage of suitors wanting to marry her. Why should your cousin pick on me? I've never been particularly friendly with him in the past – certainly not to that extent – yet when I met him on this journey, he was so pressing, so insistent that I should give him a definite undertaking to marry her. What am I to make of it? It's almost as if the girl's family was doing the pursuing. I can't help feeling very dubious about the whole affair. I wish I hadn't given him those swords. I thought of you as the person most likely to be able to help me get to the bottom of this business.'

‘For a person so intelligent you have left it a bit late to start feeling dubious now that you have promised to marry the girl and already given them your pledge,' said Bao-yu. ‘You started off by saying that you wanted to marry a beauty. Now that you've got one, why not leave it at that? Why these suspicions?'

‘You said just now you didn't even know about her sister's marriage,' said Xiang-lian. ‘How do you
know
she is so beautiful?'

‘I saw her practically every day for a month at Ning-guo
House when she and her sister were brought there by Cousin Zhen's mother-in-law,' said Bao-yu. ‘How could I fail to know? Ravishingly beautiful. Obviously made for you.
You
San-jie, you see: even the name makes her yours!'

Xiang-lian stamped impatiently.

‘And everyone else's, no doubt.' Bao-yu's execrable pun had not amused him. ‘It won't do. This is a thoroughly bad business. The only clean things about that Ning-guo House are the stone lions that stand outside the gate. The very cats and dogs there are corrupted!'

Bao-yu reddened, and Xiang-lian, realizing that he had gone too far, began pumping his hands apologetically.

‘I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. – But surely you can tell me something about her character?'

‘Since you appear to know already, I don't quite see the point,' said Bao-yu wryly. ‘In any case, perhaps I'm none too clean myself.'

‘What I said was spoken in the heat of the moment,' said Xiang-lian. ‘You mustn't take it to heart.'

‘I've already forgotten it,' said Bao-yu. ‘If you go on talking about it, you will make it seem that the one who has taken it to heart is you.'

Xiang-lian pumped his hands again and took his leave. He was still thoroughly unhappy about the whole affair. At first he thought of going back to Xue Pan and talking it over with him; then he changed his mind, partly because Xue Pan was ill but mainly because in any case he had little confidence in his judgement. In the end he decided that perhaps the best thing would be simply to ask for his pledge back. Once he had made up his mind, he decided to tackle Jia Lian about it immediately. He found him at Er-jie's place.

Jia Lian, delighted to hear that Xiang-lian had already come to call, came hurrying out to meet him and conducted him to the inside sitting-room to introduce him to his future mother-in-law. He was somewhat surprised when Xiang-lian merely bowed to the old lady instead of making her a kotow and addressed her formally as ‘Mrs You'. The significance of this became apparent presently when tea was served and Xiang-lian came at once to the point.

‘I am afraid that when I met you recently on my travels I
acted far too hastily. I didn't know at the time, but it seems that my aunt had already in the fourth month chosen another girl to be my wife. When she told me about it, there was obviously nothing I could say. To hold to my agreement with you would have meant disobeying my aunt, and that of course is out of the question. Now, if the pledge I gave you had been gold or silk or something of that sort, I should simply have forgotten about it; but those swords I gave you were a family heirloom left me by my grandfather, so I'm afraid I shall very regretfully have to ask you for them back.'

Jia Lian was unable to take this calmly.

‘Now look here, young Liu, this won't do, you know! A pledge is a pledge. The whole idea of it is to guard against people having second thoughts like this. An engagement to marry isn't something you can just jump into and out of at will. I'm afraid what you are proposing is quite impossible.'

Xiang-lian smiled patiently.

‘No doubt you are in the right, and I am perfectly prepared for you to reproach me; but I'm afraid I cannot go through with this marriage under any circumstances.'

Jia Lian seemed about to argue, but Xiang-lian frustrated him by rising to his feet.

‘Could we go and discuss this somewhere else, please? It isn't very convenient, talking about it in here.'

You San-jie had been able to hear the whole of this conversation quite clearly from her room. She had waited so long for Xiang-lian, and now that at last he had come, he was rejecting her. It must be because of something he had heard about her in the Jia mansion. He probably thought of her as a shameless wanton, the sort of woman who throws herself at men, unworthy to be his wife. If she allowed the two men to go off together, there was little likelihood that Jia Lian could do anything to stop him breaking off the engagement; and even if he tried arguing with him, the probable outcome would only be further damage to her reputation. As soon, therefore, as she heard Jia Lian agreeing to go outside with him, she snatched the swords down from the wall, and having first drawn out the Duck and hidden it behind her back, she hurried into the sitting-room to see them.

‘There is no need for you to go out and discuss anything,' she said. ‘Here is your pledge back.'

The tears were pouring down her cheeks like rain. She held out the scabbard with the single sword in it in her left hand. As Xiang-lian took it, she whipped the other sword out with her right hand and slashed it across her throat. It was all over in a moment.

‘He didn't force her to do it, it was her own decision. What good will taking him to the yamen do? We don't want a public scandal on top of everything else. Much better let him go.'

Jia Lian, whose resolution seemed temporarily to have deserted him, let go of Xiang-lian automatically: but Xiang-lian made no attempt to escape.

‘I didn't know she was like this,' he said, weeping. ‘She had a noble heart. It wasn't my luck to have her.'

He lifted up his own voice then and wept, as if he had been weeping for his bride. He stayed with the family until the coffin had been bought and San-jie laid inside it; and when the lid was closed over her, he threw himself on it and clung to it for a long time weeping. Only then did he take leave of them, walking alone out of the gate, blinded by his tears and scarcely knowing where he was going.

As he walked along in a daze, his thoughts full of San-jie's rare combination of beauty and resoluteness which he had so wantonly rejected, one of Xue Pan's little pages came looking for him to take him to his new house. Xiang-lian was too distracted to pay the boy much attention and allowed himself to be led there by the hand. It was a pleasant, well-appointed
little house. While he and the page stood waiting in the sitting-room, he heard a little tinkling noise – the sound made by the girdle-gems of a hurrying woman – and San-jie came into it from outside. She had the Duck cradled in her right arm. Her left hand was holding some sort of album or ledger.

‘I loved you for five years,' she said. (The tears were still running down her cheeks.) ‘I did not know that your heart was as cold as your face. It was a foolish love, and I have paid for it with my life. Now I am ordered to go to the Fairy Disenchantment's tribunal in the Land of Illusion to keep the records of the other lovers who are under her jurisdiction. But I could not bear to leave without seeing you just once more before I go. After this I shall never see you again.'

She began to go, but Xiang-lian wanted to question her and tried to stop her going. She spoke again, but this time it sounded more like an incantation.

‘From love I came; from love I now depart. I wasted my life for love, and now that I have woken up, I am ashamed of my folly. From now on we are nothing to each other, you and I – nothing.'

A little gust of wind with a faint fragrance on it seemed to blow past him as she uttered these last words, and the very next moment she had vanished.

Xiang-lian came to himself with a start, uncertain whether or not he had been dreaming. He could see no sign of Xue Pan's little page when he looked about him, and the new house had turned into a dilapidated temple. Not far from him a Taoist with a crippled leg sat catching and killing his lice. Xiang-lian got up and went over to him.

‘What is this place, holy one?' he asked, having first clasped his hands and knocked them against his forehead in the appropriate salutation. ‘And may I know whom I have the honour of addressing?'

The Taoist chuckled.

‘I don't know where this place is any more than you do. Nor who I am. It is a place where I am resting a little while before going on elsewhere.'

It felt to Xiang-lian as if a douche of icy water had penetrated him to the bone with its coldness. He understood.
Without a moment's hesitation he drew the companionless Drake out of its scabbard, stretched out his queue, slashed through