After Herrick had been buried, there was nothing to keep him from dividing what remained of his money. Ronald was anxious to be done with the task. He exacted but one promise, a promise from the t'ai-t'ai that when Nancy's first month of married life was complete and the girl, as custom allowed, was able to sleep a few nights under another roof than her husband's, she should come to his sister's home instead of the father's house she ought to have visited. This was reasonable, for Edward was the only kinsman left to her.
Herrick's pretentious household melted away. Each wife, when she received her money, took pains to put herself out of the t'ai-t'ai's reach. There was none of them that wished to be slave to that arrogant lady. With a contemptuous smile she watched them scatter. After they and their children and their bundles and bedding and their wrangling servants had gone, she gave up the lease of the house Herrick had occupied so long, sold what she could of his furniture, and betook herself to her brother's. Of the line her husband had been so ambitious to found, literally not even the name remained.
Ronald took care to obtain and note the t'ai-t'ai's address; Nancy's bridal month was so nearly finished that he could not govern his eagerness to have her come. The rest of Herrick's family he made no effort to trace. Except the amah, who of course remained with Edward, they might scatter to the winds for all he cared. But suddenly one evening when the Ferrises had finished dinner a hubbub in the kitchen woke them from the lethargy of worrying about Nancy, for Edward's presence among them had been a continual reminder of his sister's absence; they jumped up in alarm when the old nurse rushed gasping into the room, crying out, "They've gone, they've gone!" It took them some minutes to understand what she meant. Not till Kuei-lien appeared and rapidly poured out her story to Edward was the cause of the amah's excitement understood.
To their consternation they learned that the t'ai-t'ai had broken her promise. She had gone with her brother and his whole family back to their native town of Paoling. And Nancy, as naturally she must do, had gone with them. It was the last blow.
The other details of Kuei-lien's story were more interesting to Edward than to his discouraged guardian. The one fact which might have been of use, her coming from the same town as the t'ai-t'ai, was robbed of advantage because the girl did not dare nor intend to go home. If she had done so she would have been handed over to the t'ai-t'ai by her stupid and covetous family. She was the single one of Herrick's concubines whom his wife had tried to retain. Her parents were dependents of the Chou family, absolutely under their orders, while the t'ai-t'ai not only did not like losing a slave of Kuei-lien's beauty and cleverness but still more regretted letting her escape with the money she had gathered. Their separation had cost them a quarrel. The t'ai-t'ai had commanded the concubine to remain, had threatened to hold her boxes and to have the girl beaten. If Kuei-lien had been less bountiful in bribing the servants, she could not have got away. The t'ai-t'ai's stinginess had proved her safety.
So Kuei-lien, meditating new plans, lay low. She cultivated the friendship of the amah, husbanded the money she owned, while she looked for chances to get more. And because she maintained some slight connection with Pao-ling and might get them news of Nancy, the Ferrises were pleased to let her stay. They did not guess a tenth of her plans nor realize that she was using the shelter of their servant quarters to let it be known she was under foreign protection, that any offense offered to her would be visited upon the offender by the King and Parliament of Great Britain.
As for poor Nancy, the King and Parliament of Great Britain had lost interest in her. The secluded Chihli village of Paoling kept her as hidden from prying strangers as the fastnesses of Turkestan. Nancy had never been told of the promise that she should visit Edward in his new home. She was saved this disappointment. But she knew it was the last step away from her friends when her mother-in-law summoned her to pack and to get up long before dawn for the cold dark ride to the station. Long as she had lived in Peking, the city was a place strange and unfamiliar to the girl, yet she conceived a fondness even for the arches and walls she barely could descry in the darkness, for she felt she should never set eyes upon them again.
With the rest of her husband's family she bundled uncomfortably into a third-class carriage, squeezing herself so tightly between baskets and bedding that she sat as though cramped stiffly in a vise. Everyone spoke shrilly; the early hour, the bitterly frosty morning, had set their tempers on edge. No one was in a mood to enjoy the novelty of a railway ride. Nancy looked wearily at the dingy houses they passed, wondered if their occupants could be unhappier than she was; she saw in the distance the blue roofs of the Temple of Heaven, but paid no heed; if her legs had not been so stiff, her whole body aching from the need of movement, she might have gone to sleep counting the numbers of the telegraph poles. Her mind did go to sleep; her body persisted in staying painfully awake.
She was grateful to get off the train, grateful to shake her numb legs into life, pulling boxes and bales quickly out of the car. The t'ai-t'ai and her mother-in-law gave contradictory orders, they wrangled and shouted, pulling servants helter-skelter, scolding Nancy, scolding her husband; they were only one of many groups invoking heaven and hell in their panic lest the train should start before the last bundle had been rolled out of the window.
By a miracle they got themselves untangled and down to the platform, where the women sank breathless on rolls of bedding, waiting for a bargain to be struck with the mule-drivers. This was not quickly nor quietly done and Nancy, used to having these small matters arranged without her presence, despaired of its ever being done at all. To the mule-drivers and their opponents, however, the hiring of a cart was more heady business than speech in a public forum. Not till vulgar interest was diverted to Nancy, whose presence in this company became an eighth day's wonder, did the arguing parties see that their prominence of the moment had passed; they made the same bargain they could have made half an hour back. Chou hsien-sheng swore he was cheated, the drivers swore they were robbed, but the price they fixed had been the unchanging rate for a decade.