“I am worried,” he said. “We so gaily started on this expedition, unthinking of the difficulties which would ensure. Now these difficulties pile up against us. Liu suspects. Li Po, it is true, does not care. Wang Wei is doubtful, for physicians, even if they only practice occasionally, are skilled in recognising those instinctive movements which make it possible to distinguish between a man and a woman. Last night I did not care if danger lay in our plan. Today, in the full light of the sun, I remember only too clearly the ways in which an angry emperor, an old, angry emperor, may bar for a while the denied gateway between life and death, while he joys in the suffering of one whom he believes he is thus punishing. For you I have, as you know, an almost paternal feeling, but even that cannot compensate me for a possibly unendurable death.”
Winter Cherry sat down on the bed and made room for Han Im beside her. She said: “I would that all of you would think less of possible trouble. I, who have most to lose if I am discovered, seem least fearful. You worry about discovery—Li Po worries about having to be respectable because Wang Wei is here, Wang Wei worries because he is not sure of me, and Liu worries because he wants to be sure of me. The two chattering girls worry because tomorrow they will have to go elsewhere, and Ah Lai worries because he is afraid of everybody’s guesses. Alas, I might as well be in the Pepper Rooms at Chang-an.”
Han Im did not comment on what he felt to be ingratitude, and shortly she was left alone. The day bore on through the hours of the goat and the monkey, and the time of Wang Wei’s feast came nearer. Winter Cherry knew how, with wine, man’s nature sloughs convention, how at the tenth cup all is crystal-clear. She did not look forward to this feast, but as it had to be endured, she endured it.
Ah Lai had been busied much of the afternoon with his uncle, Li Po, and Wang Wei. The two girls tittered when they looked at Winter Cherry, but she put on a brave face and made suggestions to them which she hoped they would not accept, but which made her femininity seem a safe secret.
The hour of the monkey had reached its end when Wang Wei sent a servant for her. He was sitting on a rustic bench beside a high bamboo hedge.
“Sit down,” he said. “As I and my party are to leave tomorrow, I thought it only fitting to seize now the opportunity of seeing more of you, who are the least known to me of all you four who came on foot from the North. Li Tai Po I know only too well—that compound of genius, loose-living and good heart; the eunuch Han Im I remember well from my last visit to the capital, before I decided that Court was not for me and that a few simple herbs and fresh spring water led a man nearer to the Eight Fold Path than the rich messes of cookery and the cellars of wealthy men.” He seemed quite sincere in all this, so that Winter Cherry, in spite of the rich morning meal and the evening’s promised banquet, made no protest at apparent inconsistency, Wang Wei looked at her, and then went on: “I now know Ah Lai to be the nephew of Li Po, and to possess the virtues and faults of his age—impulsiveness and lack of breadth. But of you, young fellow, I know nothing, and it is not my custom nor my pleasure to know nothing of those with whom I share a table, however meagre.”
Winter Cherry replied: “Sir, the deference which youth owes to age prevents my making a fitting reply. It is true that Li Po, Han Im, Ah Lai and I came on foot from the north, and it is also true that Chang-an, the Capital, lies to the north. This should have given you a clue that questions are sometimes better left unasked, for knowledge of high secrets is often fatal to both parties—the teller and the hearer. But even I, who have seen so few summers, may with diffidence point out that we came here expecting to find the place empty, and that your kind hospitality was none of our seeking nor of our expecting. It does not, therefore, give you the right to demand an answer to your question.”
Wang Wei smiled. “Let me tell you a story,” he said. “Two years ago, towards the end of summer, I was in Chang-an. There had been the usual banquets and orgies of poetry, for those of the Court do not realise that the simple life is worth a hundred hundreds of examples of refined cookery and unrefined taste. Well, one day, when I was walking in the Park (for even then, at fifty-three, a certain freedom was allowed me) I met a girl whose name was Winter Cherry. She had not long come into the Emperor’s family, and was more than a little homesick. We talked, and in the course of our talk it turned out that she came from a village through which I had lately passed. Naturally, she asked for news of home. Later, when I sat with my lamp and my thoughts, I wrote: