“I shall talk with him again, if he will allow me to do so,” Winter Cherry said, ponderingly. “I feel that, if I tell him all that is in my mind, that mind will become even clearer. And yet I am afraid to see too clearly. It is as if a man were to become a bird and look down on the doings of men when they were not aware of the bird’s presence overhead. People are different when they do not know that they are being watched. Then, they are more truly themselves. What have you done since I saw you last?”
And Ah Lai, in the darkness of the summerhouse, looked a little ashamed, not of what he had done since he went to Cheng-tu with the Emperor, but of what he had done before then. So, being a little wiser than might have been expected, he strove to give the impression that he would rather not talk about Cheng-tu. He knew that, if she found out from others what had happened there, she would find nothing to his discredit. As regarded the interlude with Honeysuckle and the things that had happened on the road with Kuei-fei, he hoped that she would not enquire. He reserved the right to be himself, he reflected, but all the same it had been summer foolishness. Both of the women had known, much better than he the precise way to get round a man.
Winter Cherry . . . now, was different. She might not understand.
So Ah Lai said that it was late and that he must sleep well before his business at the Capital tomorrow.
Winter Cherry was a little surprised at this, but also a little relieved at the deferment. She followed him back to the buildings and sought to find the priest.
The priest was apparently sleeping in the empty guest-room.
When Winter Cherry entered he sat up and looked at her.
She said: “I wanted to ask if it is right for me to try to see clearly all that is in my mind. I am a little afraid of that.”
The priest replied: “Not to see clearly is not to see at all. You cannot see through a rounded, white pebble in a river bed; though the light comes through it you cannot know what is on the other side of the pebble.”
“But is it wise to see?” she asked. “It may be that at the other side of the pebble are things which we would rather not see.”
“That is for you to decide for yourself,” he said. “The boy is your pebble. Do you wish to turn it over?”
“I do not know,” she said. “I am afraid of what I might find. Yet you have shown me how, by facing my own fears, they may be conquered. Do I wish to face all my fears?”
The priest rubbed his stomach. “As food is not food until a man eats it, so a fear is not a fear until it is experienced. You remember the Master’s words? I mean, of course, Lao Tze, who knew Tao. He said: ‘
“He has not yet offered marriage,” she said. “His is a very famous family, and famous families observe the conventions.”
“You resemble your very capable mother,” he replied. “She is well-gone with child, yet she strives to conceal it by loose clothing, by unchanged behaviour. Is she trying to conceal it from herself? You, girl, know what is in the boy’s mind, yet you strive to convince yourself that it is proper to await a formal declaration or the visit of a go-between. You know the boy’s mind. Show him that you know it. Now I shall go to sleep again, for this is no problem at all.”
He turned his back on her.
But when Winter Cherry had gone to her room, she found she could not sleep. Somehow she had not said either to Ah Lai or to the priest any of the things which she had intended to say, and although she closed her eyes her imagination drew pictures which she did not wish to dispel. She knew that, in her fresh found clarity of thinking, her mind was playing with thoughts which should not be played with by an unmarried girl until all formalities have been completed and, in a closed and stuffy carrying chair, she is being borne swiftly towards her husband’s threshold.
What was it that the Lady Yang had said, when she and the Emperor had made their secret, solemn pledge?
She rose from her bed, lit the lamp and took writing materials.
She wrote: