CHAPTER XXXII
Nancy returned to find the formidable old t'ai-t'ai crowing over her triumph. To outwit her daughter was always tonic which put new life in her veins.
"Can you choose between your husband and me?" she asked, with her usual terrifying directness.
Nancy knew the time for a straight answer.
"I can choose," she replied.
"Bravely spoken," said the old lady in her glee, "you are too clever to be a mere bedfellow."
Nancy saw what was coming next but waited carefully so as not to miss her cue in this game of frank riddles.
"Have you seen your husband's room?"
"I have seen it."
"And what do you think of this room next to mine?"
The woman pointed to an open door. Nancy followed her indication and looked into a neat bare chamber, scoured cleaner than most of the apartments in this dilapidated house.
"The air is better here," she said smiling.
The lao t'ai-t'ai beamed with approval of her words.
"All said neatly in a phrase, as a scholar ought to say it," she thought to herself, "not a breath of complaint about her husband, not an undutiful syllable, and yet the whole story clear as the sun."
"Ai, my daughter," she said, "that is to be your room. Your wit would be wasted anywhere but here."
At the command of her mistress Nancy brought her things. She was astonished by the readiness of the other women to help her and not much daunted by their advice.
"My mother is an old woman," warned the stepmother, holding Nancy by her scowling voice, "and like all old women, much given to strong fancies. At the moment her fancy is for you and, because she may not live long, it is our natural duty to humor her. Your parents-in-law and your husband of course have agreed to this and we expect you to obey her in everything she asks and to make her comfortable, whatever the cost to yourself. But do not forget that an old woman's words are many and her memory is brief, and that while she may condescend to honor you as her companion and to say kind things to you, that gives you no excuse to be proud or to think that you are better than the rest of us. She is the head of the family; she can say what she chooses; but you are still the least of us, you have to wait your time of authority, like every person of your years, and if you let your head be turned by an old woman's flattery, then the day will come—and it may come soon—when you will have bitter lessons to learn at our hands and at the hands of your husband. I tell you this because you have been spoiled too much already; you have been indulged by your father and made a little god by a maudlin old nurse, and it would be a pity if the training we have started to give you had to be repeated with a stick merely because my worthy old mother cannot curb her passion for new faces."
Usually Nancy was cut to the quick by the malice of these speeches, but she could afford not to be angry with words which had no power to back them. There was the threat of the future indeed,—her parole hung upon the precarious life of the old dowager,—but a future threat was better than a present one. The bride was sufficiently grateful for her good fortune of the moment not to worry over her stepmother's brandished cudgel.
And for once the cudgel had been brandished more from habit than from active spite. Nancy's stepmother, in fact, had abundant reason to be content, for the old t'ai-t'ai out of her own lips had suggested a plan her daughter had been revolving in her mind, the purchase of a Chinese wife for Ming-te. She had half promised the youth a solace for his ill-sorted marriage, but it was a difficult subject to broach so soon after his wedding. Nancy might be obstinate and make trouble; the dowager, in a contrary mood, might block it. Herrick's widow was eager to inflict on the daughter the jealousy she had suffered from the father's roving desires; she planned further to help this concubine into Nancy's place till the real wife should become little better than a servant. And now, wonderfully enough, the old t'ai-t'ai, who had to be led so warily like a balky mule into every project, had blessed the scheme by proposing it from her own mouth. She was, in fact, saving her daughter much strain by breaking it to Nancy.
"I am borrowing you, heart and body, from your husband," she said; "we can quickly find a substitute for you."
"A substitute?" asked Nancy.
"Yes, a substitute to take your place by his side. If I steal you, it is only fair that he should be given another wife in your place."
"Then I don't have to go back to him?" inquired the girl with hope in her voice.
The old lady smiled.
"That was an unguarded question," she said. "I fear you are not properly disturbed at dividing your husband's affections with another. No, my child, while I live I think you will not have to go back to him. You must pray for me daily to the god of long life, for after I die—ah, we can't discuss that now. But don't you mind another bride for your husband?"
"I know that I am an unworthy match for your grandson."
"Pooh! You know nothing of the sort; don't trouble to speak in this grand manner to me. I didn't make my grandson and I am very humble about taking credit for his amiable qualities. If you had been a worthy match for Ming-te then you would never have been worthy to entertain me in my dotage. But you are still his wife and you need not efface yourself from this privilege. The new woman, whoever she may be, will be your servant as well as his and you must teach her to mind you from the first. These jades are often headstrong and they hide many a pleasant ambition under their black hair."
"I will not hinder her," said Nancy, a little sadly, though she was glad that her release from Ming-te promised for months, perhaps for years, to be so complete. She had no tender feelings for her husband, none but impulses of aversion and shame, and yet she was sad because already she seemed to see her father's splendid dream go toppling, and the Chinese marriage of his daughter fast becoming no marriage at all.
"That is not a shrewd policy in this family," observed the lao t'ai-t'ai; "you should always hinder everything. What will you do when I die?"
"I don't know what I shall do when you die. I shall not care much what I do."
"Ha, you are the only member of the family who has not laid plans for that grateful event. Even the pigs, I dare say, have disposed of the warmest parts of this chamber to rest their snouts. But never mind, we must plan that you shall not be the loser for helping me. You are staking more than you know on the choice you have made to-day."
The lao t'ai-t'ai left the subject with this vague promise. Nancy's trouble passed like a cloud; she trusted the power of her aged mistress to defend her from evil, recognizing the wisdom that drew from a fund of experience, to provide against hazards she herself saw but darkly, yet in the back of her mind still lurked a sense of pity because her marriage to Ming-te was being confessed a failure so quickly. She could not stamp out a smouldering jealousy when she saw her place being given to another and knew that her husband of a month remembered her costly sacrifice without one tender thought.
Soon the household was aflame with new plans. To take a concubine, of course, was not to take a wife. The same ceremonies could not be used: there could be no scarlet chair, no procession, no worship of heaven and earth. But everything short of full nuptial rites was proposed to give dignity to Ming-te's second wedding. Nancy could not move through the house without feeling that this, in the eyes of the family, was the real wedding and that they grudged her the few empty privileges of the wife, as though she had stolen them. On this bride they were putting their hopes, from her body they wanted Ming-te to beget sons, not from the foreigner, whose half-caste children could only be the living occasions for explanation and apology.
Hai t'ai-t'ai was as swift in forwarding this wedding as Nancy's, and, because there were no middlemen to be bargained with or gifts to be exchanged, she could soon promise the arrival of the bride whom she personally had chosen and fetched from Peking. On a sharp November day the girl arrived. The house was crowded to receive her, for all the members of the family, the neighbors, the friends, who had been unable to go up to the capital for Nancy's wedding, made the most of this second event and feasted loudly and joyfully at the expense of their hosts. Nancy stood quietly to receive the homage of her new servant. She said nothing at the feast and ate little, listening to the talk of those round her like the stranger she was. She could not help noticing how they held aloof as though they did not regard her as one of themselves. Their eyes were upon the newcomer who had displaced her, and Nancy looked too, admitting her pretty face, her dainty figure, the quick, frightened intelligence of her eyes, thinking so vividly of her own bridal day that she was ready to take the girl by the hands and call her sister.
But she failed of courage to do this. This girl, after all, was being received as a friend whereas she had been received as an enemy. The contrast was too bitter. Nancy sat out the feast to the end, she tried to abide the amusement of putting the bride to bed, lest they should hint that she was jealous, but she knew again, now that people neglected her, as she had learned with such a shock when they mocked her, that she was an alien and had no place among them. Everyone was so unfeignedly happy to-day. Ming-te did not need to be made drunk to desire his new bride. She had been cheated of this happiness. Her thought ran to her father's couplet about the sun and the moon; she had a sudden desperate longing for Ronald, for the gay, secure life of the Ferrises; she could not stand the tumult round her any longer, but fled to her dark room to hide her misery.
It might have been for hours that she wept before a hand touched her.
"Why do you care?" she heard a voice softly asking her.
Nancy looked round to see the lao t'ai-t'ai, black against the light from the next room. She stood up, ashamed to be caught weeping, remorseful at having neglected her mistress.
"Do you care?" asked the old lady.
"No," said Nancy.
"Hm-m, I didn't think you did."
The girl started to get out bedding for her mistress and help her prepare to sleep, but the woman stopped her.
"I am not ready to sleep," she said.
Her eyes burned with an unslumbering vitality Nancy had not seen before; everything they had looked upon in their seventy years seemed to be passing in review; they quickened with the pride of one who has held her own sway over time. Nancy stood spellbound before the dignity of this ancient woman who used to attend the Eastern Empress herself a whole fifty years ago; in satin and gold she was regal, but it was still her eyes which could not be forgotten, making Nancy believe there were no secrets she could not read, no mysteries she could not understand, when she brought to bear upon her own tear-blanched face the sympathy of one who has walked deep and richly through experience. From those far-off glittering days she seemed to look back at Nancy and to know why she had been weeping.
"Those tears were not for Ming-te," she said quietly.
"No, they were not for Ming-te," Nancy confessed.
"Why did your father wish to marry you to him? Were there no others? Or did he become tired?"
"He became tired," answered Nancy, scarcely knowing what she said.
"Ah, that is our weakness when we become old. We do grow tired of searching out the equal of our hopes. We have been doing it in vain for so many years that at last we think the search is useless—and then we make our mistakes. If your father had sat here to-day, he would have known that you do not belong here, not with these people."
"I belong nowhere," cried Nancy in despair.
"You don't belong with sheep and donkeys."
The old woman sat meditating. Then she smiled.
"I suppose there are sheep and donkeys the whole world over," she reflected. "Your father thought his own people were sheep and donkeys and I think mine. No, my child, you don't belong to them and you can't always belong to an old woman like me because I am old and you are young. Why were you weeping?"
"Because I was lonely and miserable," said Nancy, surprised by the abruptness of the question.
"Lonely, yes, of course, the wise are bound to be lonely. But you cannot be lonely yet. You are too young."
"I am not lonely with you," Nancy declared.
"Ha, my child, you have a way with the old. You flatter old bones like mine. But you are not yet twenty and I am seventy. I shall keep you with me; I cannot give you up. But when they carry me out to the hills there will be no place here for you. Don't you see what I have been doing?—what they have been doing too?—making it impossible for you to live here. I came here a stranger too, like yourself; ai, that was long ago. My home was in the south where it is warm and the bamboos foam up the mountain sides, but not here—" With a gesture she pictured the bleak Chihli plains, drab, leafless country which the north wind is in a desolate hurry to leave behind. "Not here—and I don't wish you to get used to the smell of horse-drench and the braying of asses. You might have got used to it, ah, that's the pity, but you never can now, for there is no place for you here. You will never be the head of this family. Ming-te has a new wife; she is your servant, yes, but the servant will become the mistress. They don't tell me that; they think I don't guess their plans; bah, they think I can live so long and be blind; but if they came to me and consulted me openly I would tell them that it is not their plan but mine."
She paused for a minute. Nancy groped for the meaning hid behind this roundabout speech.
"Why were you weeping?" suddenly asked the old t'ai-t'ai, catching her quite off her guard. Nancy did not dare to reply because she knew too well why she had been weeping. The distant music, the fear of being left alone in this dreary household after the old t'ai-t'ai had died, revived the longing for Ronald's protection; just when the thought filled her heart the abrupt question trapped the girl. She blushed, as though her shrewd old protector had detected the wish itself.
"You too, my child, hide things from me," playfully scolded the lao t'ai-t'ai. Then she surprised the girl by another quick turn. "Did your father ever ask for you a husband of your own race? Ming-te was an afterthought, you know and I know. Come, you needn't be embarrassed; a person of my years can discuss these things. We make our own laws when we have lived long enough."
"How did you know what my father did?" exclaimed Nancy.
"You yourself have just told me," laughed the woman. She smoothed Nancy's hair with the gentle masterful hands which always radiated such warm feelings of safety, quelling doubt and uneasiness till the girl shut her eyes as if she were sinking asleep in a pleasant bed. "But I didn't need you to tell me," she continued, "for I knew your father's nature and I know yours. Your father was a better Chinese than most of us; he was a scholar; he was a gentleman; the old customs were at his finger tips. But he couldn't unmake himself and he couldn't unmake his daughter, and when you grew old enough to be married his heart must have lost much peace. He never wanted you to marry Ming-te. He had found and lost another husband for you."
"How did you know these things?" cried Nancy again.
"Didn't he?"
"Yes," confessed the girl.
"Aha, my daughter, now I do truly know why you were weeping. You obeyed your father when he didn't want you to obey him. I have heard your story and much more than you thought you were telling me with your lips. We old people can't sit on the k'ang all day watching the strange things men do without seeing many things they think they have hidden. But I have marveled at you. No daughter ever honored her father as you have done. Not a word of complaint, not an unmannerly sentence have you spoken, not a breath against Ming-te or these women who persecuted you. This would be a splendid family, a glorious family indeed, if it were fit for a daughter like you. But it isn't. You don't belong here. You and I should have been young together. Those were days when men understood. What does a republic make us? Sheep and donkeys! No, you don't belong here; and when I die I will send you where you do belong. Tell me about the husband your father first chose for you."
"I have told you," said Nancy, carried out of her embarrassment.
"Tell me what your father said of him."
Nancy, in her excitement, struggled to pull out a piece of paper which she wore like a talisman.
"This is what my father wrote for him," she explained.
The old lady took the paper as though she had expected it. She held it close to the smoking wick by her bed and read it twice or three times.
The sun moving to the west kindles a splendid beacon for the
moon;
The moon following from the east tenderly displays the
reflection of the sun.
"Ah, my child," she said, after reading it slowly, "we should have burned incense before we dared to read this. We were wrong, wrong, to disobey these words. They are the mandate of heaven itself."
Nancy stood in a trance. From far through the house came the noise of laughter and music.