I was pleased with the poem.”
Winter Cherry said: “It is indeed a poem to be pleased with.”
“If I may excuse the coincidence by expressing my own willingness to forget all that you have not said, I will do so, but when you start at a man’s touch, so, even if the man be a physician like myself, I may claim forgiveness for thinking that it is possible for Winter Cherry, whom I so well remember, and yourself, who wear so awkwardly a man’s clothes, to be one and the same.”
Winter Cherry left him without reply and went back to the house. Ah Lai found her crying, with her bundle half-packed, the flute sticking forlornly from its end.
“I must go away,” she said, and told him of Wang Wei’s suspicions. “I shall bring misfortune upon you all. He is acquainted with my father and, the interfering old man, is prepared to bring us together, like one of the gods in the old plays. He spoke to me two years ago, when he was at the Capital, and has not forgotten me, as I had hoped.”
“You want to see your father?” Ah Lai asked.
She sobbed: “When a girl leaves her father’s house to enter that of the Emperor, she has nothing further to do with her father—if she is an ordinary girl, like me. I know that the Lady Yang’s family has been honoured by the Emperor, so that her relatives have been given titles, but I am not the Lady Yang.”
“These stupid old men!” Ah Lai cried.
Then Li Po entered and sat down with them.
He said: “Whenever I allow my heart and my inclination to rule my actions, I find that I have been unwise. I contrived a desire for change with my foolish whim to do a favour to you, girl, and now every evil that can be has descended on me. Alas, there is no poetry in the world this bitter day.”
Ah Lai replied: “You, sir, are not alone. Winter Cherry, here, finds her sex suspected by Wang Wei, who is inclined to hint at the improper. Liu Shen-hsu has his own ideas, too, and desires to draw advantages from them, and the two singing-girls look askance at her. No, assuredly you are not alone.”
“But that is not all,” Li Po went on, as if he had not heard what Ah Lai had said. “When I gaily walked out of my Porcelain Pavilion, the affair had the outlines of a prank, such as is amusing to middle-aged fools like myself. Han Im regarded it as an escape for himself and a good deed for the girl. Had that been all it would have been all. But a while ago they tell me that a traveller passed through from Chang-an, and politics seem to have combined with major strategy to undo us. In short, they say that the rebel An Lu-shan has gathered his forces and is marching on the Capital. T’ung Kuan Pass has fallen. The road lies open. The Emperor’s forces are almost in a state of rebellion, saying that as the result of government by girls and eunuchs they are ill-armed and ill-trained, and that unless the Lady Yang is sent away they can no longer be counted on as soldiers. Nevertheless the Emperor has prevailed on the officers of his guard to withdraw with him from the Capital to the South, leaving An Lu-shan an empty triumph. Alas, this is the South, and, if they should pass through here, as is most likely, I fear that an angry, disappointed Emperor and the officers of a dissatisfied army will display to me little of the courtesy to which I am accustomed. I fear that I, too, must flee before they come.”
“I should have done better to have put myself down a well,” Winter Cherry said. “I have brought disaster on all of you three.”
“When will they be here?” Ah Lai asked, and the poet shook his head.
“Tomorrow, at earliest,” he replied. “But I shall not wait for them. You, boy, will come with me. I owe it to my sister’s dead husband to safeguard you.”
Ah Lai cried: “Then, my uncle, it is a debt you will not pay, for I shall stop here, to see that no ill befalls the girl. She, surely, is in much greater danger than you, who can always charm anger away with a jade phrase. And Han Im, too, is more in danger. What of his plans?”
Li Po said: “He must decide. But even I cannot waste the time to argue with a stubborn nephew. I have told you my plans. What you do now, if you disobey me, is your own affair.”
Winter Cherry cried: “You must go with him. I will not endanger your life and your relations with your family.”
“I shall not go,” Ah Lai declared.
Then Wang Wei entered, bringing with him an atmosphere of decision.