The autumn festival dawned, but its rejoicings were only an incident, compared with the greater day hurrying upon its heels. Nancy said quiet farewell to the full moon, climbing once again into her comfortable old pine tree to watch its splendor as the moon mounted. She turned a grave face to its light; it was not only a symbol of her sex, of her womanliness, the symbol which she had learned to revere from childhood, but it was bound by deeper ties to the inmost thoughts of her heart, so deeply bound that she almost looked for a miracle to be done in her behalf and this crowning moon of her life never to wane from its completed beauty. But it waned.
The rest was a dull trance in which the days went by, scarcely counted. Night after night the moon decreased; the girl's spirits fell. She kept tryst each evening with its rising until it rose too late to be awaited. Then the darkness frightened her.
In fear she gave herself up to the will of her stepmother and submitted without words to being taught the ceremonies of her wedding, to being set up like a doll for the fitting of the bridal garments. Despite Kuei-lien's laughing advice, she remained remote and aloof, the seething bustle of the household eddying unheeded round her body, which was the only part that her eyes gave them the feeling they could claim. Where her thoughts were no one could tell, no one indeed had the curiosity to search out except Kuei-lien, whose spirit of irony was amused by the puzzle of the silent girl.
The bridal furniture had been got ready. Three days before the wedding it was sent off.
Great show was made of the chairs and tables for the bridal chamber, the chairs with their carved arms and round panels of gray Yunnan marble, but, most sumptuous of all, the bridal bed, hung so heavily with curtains of scarlet satin that the wealth of embroidery led the eyes astray from the pictures inlaid in the woodwork and even from the silver chains which drew the curtains aside. Kuei-lien's tongue was rife with jests about this bed and its heap of satin quilts. Nancy hid her burning cheeks for shame at the concubine's unsparing frankness.
"Pooh, that's nothing to be afraid of," declared Kuei-lien. "You can be mistress there, even if you are the bride. Your husband will be more frightened than you to be shut up with a strange woman, and a foreigner at that, behind those happy curtains. They will fill him full of wine to make him brave. He's only a boy, nothing to shrink from or blush about. Marriage is marriage and a bridal bed is a bridal bed; it is foolish pretending to be so delicate about things that have to be. You are lucky to have rich curtains and plenty of warm quilts and one place where your mother-in-law can't trouble you. You don't have to make your bed your profession like me."
Kuei-lien's bitter moods, her uneasy habit of thinking too deeply, made her singularly outspoken, but Nancy refused to listen further. Her only peace was to be carried on as in a dream. She could not bear to stare at her fate set forth in these visible pictures.
The bedstead, the chairs, the boxes all went their festive way to her new home, where soothsayers ensured the fortunate placing of the bed. Her father's house was draped with red, the walls were hung with scarlet banners on which "joy" was repeated in huge characters of gilt, characters written double to amplify the luck of the occasion. The courtyards were roofed with red bunting and the first chrysanthemums of the season banked high against the walls. Into the nightly feasting Nancy did not intrude, and her father did not appear, did not trust himself to see Nancy. He was ill, feeble, uncomforted by the bustle which echoed even into his silent room.
For the last evening a great feast was prepared and though only the women of the household and their kinsfolk took part, Herrick having no outside guests to invite, they made the most of their one great chance to be merry over an event which promised no good fortune to any of their number. It was the t'ai-t'ai's affair, this wedding, but that was no reason for declining the baked meats of their enemy's bounty. So they were quite cheerful and quite eager to see the girl who had lived with them, so aloof and yet so intimate, clothed at last in her bridal garments.
In her last afternoon the t'ai-t'ai came to Nancy's room to tell her stepdaughter it was time. Everything was prepared. She now needed only to put up her hair and put on her dress for the ceremonial farewell to her own family and then retire to the night's vigil of weeping and vain efforts at sleep, weeping and sleeping both rigidly prescribed by custom, before the bridal chair was heralded by trumpets in the morning. Kuei-lien came in behind the t'ai-t'ai; Li-an and a maid followed her. They had brought the clothes which the bride was now formally to try on to make sure that all was ready for the morrow.