And, indeed, Clear Rain and Honeysuckle were pouring out wine for Peng Yeh and Liu Shen-hsu.
“To poetry and agriculture,” Clear Rain cried, and they drank the toast.
Honeysuckle said, raising her own cup when she had refilled theirs: “To town and country: may they never know how much they need each other.”
“That is a peculiar toast,” Liu said. “I suppose she means that to know our dependence is humiliating.”
“The town is but a disease of the country,” Peng replied. “Alas, your wine has made me sleepy, and I have far to go tomorrow. I almost feel inclined to ask the permission of my host to retire, early as it is. I feel that drowsiness and verbal brilliance consort ill.”
And, in fact, everyone seemed sleepy, so that the little bowls of melon-seeds were only half empty when Wang Wei led the way from the room, full of apologies for the exhilarating effect of mountain air.
It was quite early in the hour of the rat, and a thin moon shed sparse light through the oiled paper windows of the room where Winter Cherry lay alone. From the next room an occasional treble snore told that Honeysuckle and Clear Rain were asleep. The rest of the house seemed shrouded in silence, a silence, so deep as to seem unnatural. Winter Cherry lay on her back, wondering why the party had broken up with so dramatic a suddenness, why Wang Wei had gone off to his room without the usual leave-taking of his guests, why her unrecognising father, Peng Yeh, had just disappeared, and why Clear Rain and Honeysuckle had not chattered, as should have been their wont, before finally blowing out the lamp. And Liu . . . she felt that Liu had intended to talk to her. Ah Lai had seemed angered by Liu’s attitude. The boy was amusingly proprietorial about her. Calf-love. His impassioned declaration at the Pavilion of Porcelain, before they had started off on their walk—she would have laughed at him if it had not been for the turmoil in her mind. But then, kindness had filled the void in her heart, and what would, at another time, have seemed laughable had then touched her as the magic jade in the story had touched and turned dross to gold. The Emperor . . .
Then Ah Lai came in like a peacock, preening.
“They are all asleep,” he told her.
She replied: “To sleep at night is natural. We did not do so last night, and I should have thought that you would be tired. But I cannot close my eyes without waking up. It seems as if one could be too tired to sleep.”
“It does not matter if the others are tired or no,” he said. “They sleep. It was magic stuff, that medicine from Wang Wei’s box which I put in the wine. And to think that those two girls believed me when I told them that it was a love elixir! They were pouring the wine, and probably drank more than the others. Listen to their snoring!”
“You put a medicine in the wine?” she cried. “Then that is why everything is so silent. But you should not have done so. It might have caused harm. My father . . .”
He reassured her: “The honourable Wang Wei did not have any, and he knew what I was doing. I told him that the girls had threatened to come to my room, so he gave me the medicine. He is very old-fashioned.”
She began again: “My father——”
“Come and see your father,” he said.
Peng Yeh was sleeping with his face towards the door. Winter Cherry saw a smile on his face. His breathing was regular and easy. She knelt down before the bed and kotowed three times. Ah Lai wanted to laugh. Then he knelt with her and kotowed too.
“You need not be so quiet,” he told her. “He only took one large cup, but look how soundly he sleeps!” He lifted Peng Yeh’s hand and put it under the rugs. Peng Yeh’s breathing did not alter in its rhythm. They went out together, back to Winter Cherry’s room.
“Save for the honourable Wang Wei, who is at the opposite end of the house, we are alone together,” Ah Lai said. “I have waited for this since first I saw you at the Pavilion of Porcelain. Did you not wonder, when I told you that I loved you, why I told you so? Did you not wonder that I, young as I am, found courage to say so? And did you not give me a little cause to hope?”
“I am afraid of Liu,” she answered. “Did he, too, drink of your medicine?”
“Nearly as much as the girls,” he told her.
They went to look at Liu. He slept with his mouth open, and his narrow lips seemed cruel, his nose as if it were about to twitch.
“I think it would be amusing to carry the two girls here, to his room,” Ah Lai said, “and put them in his bed. He would be angered to wake and find them there in the morning.”
She shook her head. “That would not be fair,” she replied. “It is hardly for me, who belong to the Emperor, to say that a girl should only go to a man if she desires to go to him, but I do say so. I would not have them made unhappy. They have shown me kindness.”
“You are no longer the Emperor’s,” he cried. “You are mine. Whatever has been is past and forgotten.”
“It cannot be forgotten,” she said, “if I bear the Emperor a child.”