Hung Lou Meng, Book II

who corrupt these fine young fellows with all the nice things you teach them!'

The moment Pao-yue perceived Madame Wang rise, he bolted like a streak of smoke. Chin Ch'uan-erh, meanwhile, felt half of her face as hot as fire, yet she did not dare utter one word of complaint. The various waiting-maids soon came to hear that Madame Wang had awoke and they rushed in in a body.

'Go and tell your mother,' Madame Wang thereupon said to Yue Ch'uan-erh, 'to fetch your elder sister away.'

Chin Ch'uan-erh, at these words, speedily fell on her knees. With tears in her eyes: 'I won't venture to do it again,' she pleaded. 'If you, Madame, wish to flog me, or to scold me do so at once, and as much as you like but don't send me away. You will thus accomplish an act of heavenly grace! I've been in attendance on your ladyship for about ten years, and if you now drive me away, will I be able to look at any one in the face?'

Though Madame Wang was a generous, tender-hearted person, and had at no time raised her hand to give a single blow to any servant-girl, she, however, when she accidentally discovered Chin Ch'uan-erh behave on this occasion in this barefaced manner, a manner which had all her lifetime been most reprehensible to her, was so overcome by passion that she gave Chin Ch'uan-erh just one slap and spoke to her a few sharp words. And albeit Chin Ch'uan-erh indulged in solicitous entreaties, she would not on any account keep her in her service. At length, Chin Ch'uan-erh's mother, Dame Pao, was sent for to take her away. Chin Ch'uan-erh therefore had to conceal her disgrace, suppress her resentment, and quit the mansion.

But without any further reference to her, we will now take up our story with Pao-yue. As soon as he saw Madame Wang awake, his spirits were crushed. All alone he hastily made his way into the Ta Kuan garden. Here his attention was attracted by the ruddy sun, shining in the zenith, the shade of the trees extending far and wide, the song of the cicadas, filling the ear; and by a perfect stillness, not even broken by the echo of a human voice. But the instant he got near the trellis, with the cinnamon roses, the sound of sobs fell on his ear. Doubts and surmises crept into Pao-yue's mind, so halting at once, he listened with intentness. Then actually he discerned some one on the off-side of the trellis. This was the fifth moon, the season when the flowers and foliage of the cinnamon roses were in full bloom. Furtively peeping through an aperture in the fence, Pao-yue saw a young girl squatting under the flowers and digging the ground with a hair-pin she held in her hand. As she dug, she silently gave way to tears.

'Can it be possible,' mused Pao-yue, 'that this girl too is stupid? Can she also be following P'in Erh's example and come to inter flowers? Why if she's likewise really burying flowers,' he afterwards went on to smilingly reflect, 'this can aptly be termed: 'Tung Shih tries to imitate a frown.' But not only is what she does not original, but it is despicable to boot. You needn't,' he meant to shout out to the girl, at the conclusion of this train of thought, 'try and copy Miss Lin's example.' But before the words had issued from his mouth, he luckily scrutinised her a second time, and found that the girl's features were quite unfamiliar to him, that she was no menial, and that she looked like one of the twelve singing maids, who were getting up the plays. He could not, however, make out what roles she filled: scholars, girls, old men, women, or buffoons. Pao-yue quickly put out his tongue and stopped his mouth with his hand. 'How fortunate,' he inwardly soliloquised, 'that I didn't make any reckless remark! It was all because of my inconsiderate talk on the last two occasions, that P'in Erh got angry with me, and that Pao-ch'ai felt hurt. And had I now given them offence also, I would have been in a still more awkward fix!'

While wrapt in these thoughts, he felt much annoyance at not being able to recognise who she was. But on further minute inspection, he noticed that this maiden, with contracted eyebrows, as beautiful as the hills in spring, frowning eyes as clear as the streams in autumn, a face, with transparent skin, and a slim waist, was elegant and beautiful and almost the very image of Lin Tai-yue. Pao-yue could not, from the very first, make up his mind to wrench himself away. But as he stood gazing at her in a doltish mood, he realised that, although she was tracing on the ground with the gold hair-pin, she was not digging a hole to bury flowers in, but was merely delineating characters on the surface of the soil. Pao-yue's eyes followed the hair-pin from first to last, as it went up and as it came down. He watched each dash, each dot and each hook. He counted the strokes. They numbered eighteen. He himself then set to work and sketched with his finger on the palm of his hand, the lines, in their various directions, and in the order they had been traced a few minutes back, so as to endeavour to guess what the character was. On completing the sketch, he discovered, the moment he came to reflect, that it was the character 'Ch'iang,' in the combination, 'Ch'iang Wei,' representing cinnamon roses.

'She too,' pondered Pao-yue, 'must have been bent upon writing verses, or supplying some line or other, and at the sight now of the flowers, the idea must have suggested itself to her mind. Or it may very likely be that having spontaneously devised a couplet, she got suddenly elated and began, for fear it should slip from her memory, to trace it on the ground so as to tone the rhythm. Yet there's no saying. Let me see, however, what she's going to write next.'

While cogitating, he looked once more. Lo, the girl was still tracing. But tracing up or tracing down, it was ever the character 'Ch'iang.' When he gazed again, it was still the self-same Ch'iang.

The one inside the fence fell, in fact, from an early stage, into a foolish mood, and no sooner was one 'Ch'iang,' finished than she started with another; so that she had already written several tens of them. The one outside gazed and gazed, until he unwittingly also got into the same foolish mood. Intent with his eyes upon following the movements of the pin, in his mind, he communed thus with his own thoughts: 'This girl must, for a certainty, have something to say, or some unspeakable momentous secret that she goes on like this. But if outwardly she behaves in this wise, who knows what anguish she mayn't suffer at heart? And yet, with a frame to all appearances so very delicate, how could she ever resist much inward anxiety! Woe is me that I'm unable to transfer some part of her burden on to my own shoulders!'

In midsummer, cloudy and bright weather are uncertain. A few specks of clouds suffice to bring about rain. Of a sudden, a cold blast swept by, and tossed about by the wind fell a shower of rain. Pao-yue perceived that the water trickling down the girl's head saturated her gauze attire in no time. 'It's pouring,' Pao-yue debated within himself, 'and how can a frame like hers resist the brunt of such a squall.' Unable therefore to restrain himself, he vehemently shouted: 'Leave off writing! See, it's pouring; you're wet through!'

The girl caught these words, and was frightened out of her wits. Raising her head, she at once descried some one or other standing beyond the flowers and calling out to her: 'Leave off writing. It's pouring!' But as Pao-yue was, firstly, of handsome appearance, and as secondly the luxuriant abundance of flowers and foliage screened with their boughs, thick-laden with leaves, the upper and lower part of his person, just leaving half of his countenance exposed to view, the maiden simply jumped at the conclusion that he must be a servant girl, and never for a moment dreamt that it might be Pao-yue. 'Many thanks, sister, for recalling me to my senses,' she consequently smiled. 'Yet is there forsooth anything outside there to protect you from the rain?'

This single remark proved sufficient to recall Pao-yue to himself. With an exclamation of 'Ai-yah,' he at length became conscious that his whole body was cold as ice. Then drooping his head, he realised that his own person too was drenched. 'This will never do,' he cried, and with one breath he had to run back into the I Hung court. His mind, however, continued much exercised about the girl as she had nothing to shelter her from the rain.

As the next day was the dragon-boat festival, Wen Kuan and the other singing girls, twelve in all, were given a holiday, so they came into the garden and amused themselves by roaming everywhere and anywhere. As luck would have it, the two girls Pao-Kuan, who filled the role of young men and Yue Kuan, who represented young women, were in the I Hung court enjoying themselves with Hsi Jen, when rain set in and they were prevented from going back, so in a body they stopped up the drain to allow the water to accumulate in the yard. Then catching those that could be caught, and driving those that had to be driven, they laid hold of a few of the green-headed ducks, variegated marsh-birds and coloured mandarin-ducks, and tying their wings they let them loose in the court to disport themselves. Closing the court Hsi Jen and her playmates stood together under the verandah and enjoyed the fun. Pao-yue therefore found the entrance shut. He gave a rap at the door. But as every one inside was bent upon laughing, they naturally did not catch the sound; and it was only after he had called and called, and made a noise by thumping at the door, that they at last heard. Imagining, however, that Pao-yue could not be coming back at that hour, Hsi Jen shouted laughing: 'who's it now knocking at the door? There's no one to go and open.'

'It's I,' rejoined Pao-yue.

'It's Miss Pao-ch'ai's tone of voice,' added She Yueeh.

'Nonsense!' cried Ch'ing Wen. 'What would Miss Pao-ch'ai come over to do at such an hour?'