The Lady of the Tapestry replied: “Our visitors were very kindly enquiring after the health of our eldest daughter, and I was about to send for the little Mooi-tsai here, in order to discover what were the only words which our eldest daughter spoke on the occasion when the child overheard her in the summerhouse.” Father Peng said: “Tell us, child.”
Mooi-tsai answered: “She said: ‘We must be going now.’ That is all I heard.”
Clear Rain, having observed that no one else was going to speak immediately, observed: “There is clearly hope for her mind. She must have received a shock and a sorrow such as we have not been able to discover.”
Mei asked: “Is it permitted that I should speak?” Then, seeing this permission in their faces, she went on: “My sister has a folded piece of paper which she will allow no one to take away from her, a piece of paper which she unfolds and seems to read, but which she folds up and puts back into her inner pocket if she thinks that anyone is watching her.”
Then Winter Cherry herself came in, looked round the room without change of face, and went out. They saw her pass across the courtyard towards the garden.
The Lady of the Tapestry said: “You must stay with us for the night. We owe you much. Mooi-tsai, see that the servants give food to the bearers and arrange for their bedding.”
“So you hold your court at sunrise,” Honeysuckle said, as she came towards Father Peng. “You will forgive me if I seem to forget myself so far as to speak first, but girls such as I are always ready to speak, to chatter in fact, perhaps in order to keep their minds off other matters.”
Father Peng glanced at the sun in the East, then at the long shadow of the summerhouse across the garden. His hands were inside the sleeves of his padded coat.
“From a creditor one does not look for apologies,” he returned. “No—you two girls have strayed far from your accustomed path in order to do a kindness to me and my family, and I feel that you have the right to speak first at a Court which, if I were a younger man, would take on an appearance difficult to explain in terms of the customary morning obeisance. Indeed, I begin to realise how much I have lost lately by my irrational retirement into seclusion: I see how foolish it is to assume that a dulling of the body’s fires should be followed by a flagging of mental flexibility. In fact, I have already derived much pleasure from the conversation which you two have provided. Also, we are grateful to you, as I have said.”
Honeysuckle, too, put her hands into her padded sleeves.
“There is a new sun-birth each day,” she said. “I am always glad to exchange my more usual activities for a turn as midwife.”
Father Peng took her up. “Arising from that,” he said, “I remember, too, when your presence brought me back from the grey depression which followed on my grandson’s death, by holding out a tenuous hope of his replacement.”
She replied: “It is difficult to speak on that. You will understand that I am more accustomed to say of a girl that she is not going to have a child than to estimate the probability that she will. And with already married women it is still more difficult. There are signs . . . One can but wait in patience.”
Thus she concealed, as far as might be, her near-certainty that the Lady of the Tapestry was not, at the immediate future, likely to make Father Peng again the possessor of a grandson.
Father Peng was saying: “I should take it as a courtesy if you could so far postpone your business in the Capital as to spare us another day of your company. I shall claim the right to deal with the claims of your bearers. But it has occurred to me that the greater, unknown shock which my eldest granddaughter has seemingly suffered might yield to the lesser, known sorrow which she experienced on the day of the death of the Lady Yang. I thought that perhaps, if you or your friend took the girl out yonder on to the slope where she was saved from a horrible death by the eunuch Han Im, something of what she felt there might flow back into her empty mind and start a return to herself.”
Honeysuckle answered: “I will get Clear Rain to go with her. Clear Rain is the possessor of a soothing, receptive personality. I, myself, am a little too sharp at the corners, too much like . . .”
Father Peng replied: “Like unresponsive jade? No; you could not be said to resemble unresponsive jade. But if you think that the girl Clear Rain would serve our purpose the better, it shall be so. They ought to have a bowl of soup, at least, ready by now.”
Honeysuckle promptly praised the evening meal of the night before, saying that its efficiency as a satisfier of appetites left her unable to take any complimentary interest in food so soon.