"And when you meet them in the morning, will you invite their 'jade toes graciously to approach'? If you do, Nancy, if you jump to fill the teapot and wait up late to put your old grandmother to bed, you will be lost, you will be their slave for the rest of your days. I know these small-livered people. They will live to a hundred just for the pleasure of bullying you, just to let you dust out every wrinkle of their sagging faces. If you have a daughter, it will be your fault because she isn't a son; if you have a son, it will be your meanness of heart that kept him from being twins. Faugh! the stupidity of having babies so that other people can cackle as if they were the hen that dropped the egg! I don't hold with these old-fashioned notions. I am a new Chinese, newer than you with all your foreign blood. And heaven help you if you have a white-haired brat!"
She said these unspeakable things so wickedly that Nancy could not keep from laughing. The betrothed girl watched the scornful twist of the lips by which the concubine expressed more aptly even than by words her pouting contempt for the Chous and all their clan. Kuei-lien's odd turns of sarcasm were pleasant to hear. The warm afternoon imparted its sense of lazy security even from the family to which she was promised. Nancy gazed with easy pleasure at her own white knees as she sat, half clothed, on the bed. She clasped her arms tightly round them and rubbed the soft skin with her cheeks, feeling almost as lazily content with summer and sunlight as she used to be in her more careless child days.
"What did Mencius say?" demanded Kuei-lien, continuing her tirade. "'At the marriage of a young woman, her mother admonishes her, accompanying her to the door on her leaving, and cautioning her with these words: You're going to your home. You must be respectful; you must be careful; do not disobey your husband.' Hm-m, I suppose your worthy old teacher put circles next to those characters, didn't he? He would. And what did the father say to his son? He 'admonished' him. That was all. The Sage didn't explain that part of it. The Sage was a man. I don't believe in sages."
Nothing was sacred to Kuei-lien in her mocking moods. She had never let Herrick be sacred even to himself.
"I don't believe in sages. I don't believe in nuns. I don't believe in priests. I don't believe in gods. And I don't believe in being respectful to a husband. You haven't a mother, Nancy; I'll be your mother. I will admonish you, I will accompany you to the door when you leave, I will caution you. Yes, indeed, you are going to your home. Very well, let them know from the first that it is your home and that you are not grateful merely for a place near the k'ang, like the chickens that peck rice off the floor. Remember, you will have the family purse in your hands, but only because they'll want you to produce twice the money that's in it, find cash for your father-in-law's opium and your mother-in-law's mah-jongg debts, and board and lodging for their third and fourth and fifth cousins and for all the children they can squeeze without cost under your roof. Stop that from the beginning; be as niggardly as they would be in your place. They will hate you, anyway, because you're a foreigner and because you're different and because they'll think if only they could have been bribed into taking your money without your precious self they might have secured a Yang kuei-fei in your stead. So you might as well give them good reason for hating you and, better still, for fearing you. Then, when you've scolded them till their ears are like wax and made them shake in their slippers every time they see your shadow crossing the courtyard, they will be only too happy to let you go back to your father, to the moon if you wish; they will press upon you the need for a long vacation and, while you're safely out of the way, they will find another wife, a nice quiet-tempered girl, for your husband, who can bear a dozen children and choke the house with the dust from her broom and pick bugs with nimble finger nails from the seams of the quilt in which your illustrious parents-in-law have been pleased to sleep for four thousand sweaty nights."
Nancy held up her hands in protest, but Kuei-lien laughed at her qualms.
"You can do it so easily," she said; "they will expect nothing better from you because you are a foreigner. Anything you do will be only what they expected. If only you browbeat them from the beginning, before they have got breath enough to browbeat you, then you will have your own way. You can go back to your father's and stay for sixty years and they will not be sorry; they will bless the spirits of their ancestors for having delivered them after their own folly in bringing a devil and a termagant into their midst. Aren't my words true? You will be happy, they will be happy, your father will be happy; everyone will be happy except the unlucky girl who takes your place. You can trust them to take revenge on her for all the injuries they have suffered from you. I don't envy her the time she'll have of it. But that's not your fault. Better somebody else miserable than poor me: that's the way to look at the foolishness of this world."
Many letters had been coming from the t'ai-t'ai, urging her husband to bring Nancy back to Peking. There were so many things to be done: the bridal furniture had to be sent, the wedding dress cut, the gifts procured. But Herrick refused to budge till the time he had set. With the coming of the eighth moon he could no longer postpone the claims of his wife. He roused himself unwillingly from this torpor of indecision and packed his reluctant family back to Peking. He had waited upon fate as long as he could, but fate offered him no help.
With their arrival in Peking, the t'ai-t'ai took vigorous command of the household. The momentum of her energy carried everyone before her, most of all Nancy, who had no further time to hesitate and reflect. The ensuing days became almost a round of processions, for Herrick had allowed barely time enough for the festivities which had to be crowded into twenty-four days. The courtyards never seemed clear of the smoke of firecrackers, the neighbors were always being called to their doors by the lilt of wind instruments. First came the wedding cakes, and the satin for the bridal dress, and elaborate gifts, which the t'ai-t'ai took care to return more elaborately.
It had been necessary to transport her brother and the important members of his family to Peking, to take for them a house in the capital, since Herrick had stood out obstinately against sending his daughter to be married in the ancestral home of the bridegroom. The t'ai-t'ai grumbled, of course; she grudged the expense which she said her brother could not afford, she moaned about the insult to her old mother who was much too feeble to make the long journey to Peking to see her grandson married. But Herrick said never to mind the expense; he would see that they were not out of purse because of this accommodation. With so liberal a promise, the t'ai-t'ai decided she could meet his wishes and she took care not only that Herrick should pay for moving Nancy's husband to Peking but that many of the showy presents, which were paraded through the streets on their way to the home of the bride, were actually gifts from Herrick to himself. Her thrift preserved Nancy's dowry intact from all the corroding expense of the wedding.