The Warning Voice (37 page)

‘I know you lot. I know how you bully the gentle ones. It's only the hard ones like me that you are afraid of. Once out of my sight you think you can get away with murder. But take care! If I hear one word of complaint from Mrs Er, I shall have you slaughtered!'

Er-jie was impressed by the concern that Xi-feng showed for her.

‘With her to stick up for me,' she thought, ‘there is really no need for me to do anything myself. Servants often
are
insolent. If I speak up about this girl and get her into trouble, people will say that I lack the forbearance that a wife – especially one in my position – is always supposed to show.'

And so, far from complaining, she covered up for Mercy and the other servants and insisted that the service they gave her was satisfactory.

A strong instinct of self-preservation at first prompted Zhang Hua to refuse. When Brightie told Xi-feng this she was furious. A young idiot, she called him; a lame dog who wouldn't
allow
one to help him over the stile.

‘You will have to explain it to him very carefully. Tell him he can charge this family with high treason for all I care; all I want is a pretext for making it hot for them. But tell him that if things show any sign of getting
too
hot, I am perfectly well able to cool them down again.'

Another idea occurred to her as Brightie was on the point of leaving.

‘He could put
your
name on the indictment,' she said. ‘Then you could go along to the court and answer it yourself.'

She gave him careful instructions as to what in that event he should say and do, assuring him that she would be able to handle the consequences herself. Confident of her support, Brightie persuaded Zhang Hua to write out an indictment in which he himself would be named.

‘“Lai” is the surname,' he said. ‘Put “Brightie Lai was principal agent of the accused.” You can say that everything Mr Lian did he was put up to doing by me.'

What Brightie was now proposing seemed to Zhang Hua much less risky than what he had suggested previously, and after some preliminary discussion about the exact form that the indictment should take, he wrote it out and went along with it next morning to the Court of Censors to ‘cry injury' on the steps outside. An usher came out to relieve him of it and take it inside to their lordships, and in due course the court came into session and the presiding Censor found himself reading a bill of indictment in which a certain ‘Brightie Lai, servant of the above' appeared as chief accomplice of the accused. Under the circumstances it seemed most expedient to have ‘Brightie Lai, servant of the above' summoned before the court.

Somewhat overawed by the prospect of making an arrest in Rong-guo House, the blackcoats sent one of their number ahead of them with a message; but Brightie, who was expecting the summons, intercepted the messenger and was outside in the street waiting for them when they arrived. He stepped forward and offered himself to them with a disarming smile.

‘I'm afraid you have been troubled on my account, gentlemen, for I think I must be the person you have come for. Here you are: slip your chain on!'

He stretched his neck out in readiness; but the blackcoats declined.

‘That's all right, brother. You just come along quietly. Nobody's going to put any chains on you!'

When Brightie arrived in the court he knelt down facing the tribunal, side by side with Zhang Hua but at a little distance away from him. The Censor ordered him to be shown the indictment, and Brightie, although he had virtually dictated it himself, affected to study it very carefully. When he had finished doing so, he handed it back again and kotowed.

‘I know all about this, my lord. It's true what it says there about my master, but it wasn't really anything to do with me. Zhang Hua has only dragged me into it because he has a personal grudge against me. The person who put my master
up to all this was someone else. Your Lordship ought to ask him about this other person.'

It was Zhang Hua's turn now to kotow.

‘There
is
another person involved, my lord, but I didn't dare to accuse him, so I put one of the servants' names instead.'

Brightie pretended to be indignant.

‘Tell his lordship who it is, you fool! This is a court of law we are in and one of the Emperor's judges you are speaking to. You've got to tell him the name of the person, no matter who it is.'

Zhang Hua admitted that Jia Rong was the person in question, whereupon the Censor, very much against his inclination, had to issue a summons for Jia Rong.

Xi-feng had secretly sent her page Cheerful to the court to see if the case was going forward. When he came back to her with this news, she hastily sent for a member of her father's household called Wang Xin, explained to him what had been happening, and told him to see the Censor on her behalf. He was to persuade the Censor to give Jia Rong a good scare, but not to proceed to any damaging judgement against him. She also gave him three hundred taels with which to strengthen his persuasion.

That night Wang Xin saw the Censor in his private chambers and obligingly supplied him with a little ‘background information' to the case. The Censor had a pretty good idea of what was expected of him. He took the proffered bribe without demur and agreed that at the next hearing it would almost certainly be discovered that Zhang Hua was a thoroughly worthless character who had brought these trumped-up charges against the Jias because he owed them money and could not pay it back.

Wang Xin also obtained a brief interview with the President of the Court of Censors at his private residence. The President was an old friend of Xi-feng's uncle, Wang Zi-teng. He had observed that the defendants in this case were all members of the Jia family and was most anxious that it should be disposed of as expeditiously and with as little fuss as possible. He had made no recommendation for special action against the defendants
as holders of commissions under the Crown, but merely confirmed what the Censor of the day had already decided: that Jia Rong should be summoned and should be required to answer the indictment.

By this time Xi-feng's discovery and Er-jie's removal into Prospect Garden were already known about in Ning-guo House, and Jia Rong and his father were anxiously discussing this latest development in Jia Lian's affairs when someone arrived to give warning of the impending summons and urge them to think quickly what they would do. Jia Rong, who had gone into the front part of the mansion to receive the messenger, came rushing back in a panic to tell his father.

‘The man has an infernal nerve!' said Cousin Zhen. ‘I thought I'd taken sufficient precautions against anything like this happening.'

He sealed two hundred taels up in a packet and sent it as a sweetener to the Censor. At the same time he ordered one of his senior domestics to go and answer the summons. He and Jia Rong were still discussing this new crisis when a cry went up that ‘Mrs Lian of Rong-guo House' had arrived. This was a most unpleasant surprise. Father and son both attempted to make a getaway, but Xi-feng was already inside the courtyard before they could disappear.

‘Ah, the head of the family!' she called after the elder of the two retreating backs. ‘You've been putting your cousin up to some nice tricks lately, haven't you?'

Jia Rong, as a junior, was obliged to go back and greet her. She seized him by the hand and marched on, with him in tow, towards the interior of the mansion.

‘Take good care of your aunt, Rong,' Cousin Zhen called out after them. ‘Tell them to slaughter some fresh meat for her dinner.'

He called for his horse and went off to hide himself elsewhere.

Xi-feng walked through into the main sitting-room inside. You-shi came out of the inner room to greet her.

‘What is it, Feng?' she asked, observing Xi-feng's ugly expression. ‘Something has upset you.'

Xi-feng spat in her face.

‘Nobody else wanted that precious sister of yours, so you had to foist her onto our family. Anyone would think all the other men in the world had died and only our Jia ones were left! But even if you'd set your heart on marrying her to a Jia, at least you might have done it properly, with go-betweens and witnesses and everything open and above-board. At least we should all have known where we were then and been able to keep up some sort of appearances. I can't think what could have come over you. Was it some phlegm that got into your heart? Was it rouge you'd swallowed, clogging up your thinking-tubes? Just what was it that made you think you could marry her to him at a time like that – a time when he was in
double
mourning: state mourning and family mourning? Now, thanks to you, we've got someone suing us: so even the people in the law-courts know what a jealous shrew I am and I have to sit by as helpless as a crab with no legs while total strangers discuss my character and wonder why my husband doesn't divorce me. What have I done wrong since I came to this place that you should want to treat me like this? Is it something that Grandma or Aunt Wang said that has made you set this trap for me, to get me out of the way? Let's go to court together, the two of us, and state our cases; and after that, let's come back here and ask for a family council so that we can have it all out into the open, face to face. You can give me a bill of divorce then if you want to, and I shall go back to my own people.'

She began to cry noisily, tugging at You-shi's arm and insisting that she should go with her to court. Jia Rong, in a desperate attempt to dissuade her, threw himself down on his knees and knocked his head repeatedly on the floor, entreating his aunt to ‘control her rage'. Xi-feng let go of You-shi and rounded savagely on Jia Rong.

‘Black-hearted villain! May God's lightning strike you and the devils tear your carcase! You're as stupid as mud, and yet you are forever meddling and interfering in what doesn't concern you, forever busybodying away at your dirty, scoundrelly little plots that in the end will ruin your family and destroy the lot of us. Nobody wants you – even the ghosts won't want you when you die, your own mother's ghost or
the ghosts of your ancestors. Don't you
dare
tell me what I ought to do!'

And she began beating him. Jia Rong redoubled the frequency of his kotows.

‘Please, auntie, please! Don't give way to anger. Don't think only of what has just happened: try to remember the good things as well as the bad. I may be very wicked, but surely in a thousand days there must have been one day when I was good! I know you have every reason to be angry with me, but there is no need for you to punish me yourself. I will gladly do it for you if it will help you to overcome your anger.'

He spread his arms out to left and right of him and began to deal himself hefty slaps upon both cheeks, prefacing each blow with an interrogation, thus:

‘Are you going to go on doing these stupid, meddlesome things in future?' (
slap
!)

‘Are you going to go on listening to Uncle instead of doing what Auntie tells you?' (
slap
!)

‘How can you bear to be so cruel and unnatural to Auntie, when Auntie has always been so good and kind to you?' (
slap
!)

The others felt like telling him to stop playing the fool. They also felt like laughing, but did not dare to. Xi-feng threw herself upon You-shi's bosom, weeping and wailing in a fine display of histrionic grief.

‘I don't mind your finding him another wife, but why was it necessary to make him break the law? Why did you let him do it without his father knowing? And why did you have to destroy my reputation while you were about it? You and I must go to the court together before the blackcoats come here and arrest us. After that we can go next door and have it all out in front of Grandmother Jia and Lady Wang and all the rest of the clan. If it's found that I am an undutiful wife who refuses to let her husband take a concubine, you can give me a bill of divorce and I shall leave without a murmur. As a matter of fact I have invited your sister here myself. I haven't dared tell Grandmother and Lady Wang about her yet because I was afraid they would be angry. At the moment she is living in the Garden, like a princess, with nothing but the best to eat and servants to wait on her hand and foot every minute
of the day. Meanwhile I've been getting an apartment ready for her at home which will be exactly the same as my own. I'd been meaning to move her in there as soon as Grandmother had been told about her. I was prepared to live in peace and harmony with her and Lian and to let bygones be bygones. But now it turns out that all the time she was betrothed to somebody else! What a mess you've made of things! Of course, I knew nothing about
this
before. When they told me yesterday that I was being sued, I was panic-stricken. I knew that even if I appeared in court to answer the charge myself, it was the Jia family that would be disgraced. So I'm afraid I took five hundred taels of Lady Wang's money without telling her, to bribe the Censor with. And even after that, he still has my servant there in custody.'

All this was spoken not as continuous discourse but punctuated by fits of weeping. In her final outburst the weeping turned almost into a scream as she began invoking her parents and her ancestors and threatening to hang or drown herself or batter her brains out against a wall. You-shi, whom all this time she had not let go of, was so mauled and crumpled that she was beginning to take on some of the aspects of a piece of well-kneaded dough and various parts of her clothing had become damp and discoloured with the moisture from Xi-feng's eyes and nose. As there was nothing much she could say in answer to Xi-feng, she shouted at Jia Rong instead.

‘Stupid little fool! A fine mess you and your father have made of things between you! I said at the time that no good would come of this.'

Xi-feng took You-shi's head in both her hands and, drawing her face close to her own, pretended to inspect the inside of her mouth.

‘
Who
's stupid? There isn't an aubergine in here. I see no sign of a gag. Why couldn't you have come and told me? If you had told me about it at the time, none of this would ever have happened. But no, you have to wait until it has got into the law-courts and the whole household is in an uproar, and now you start blaming
them
! There's a very old saying: “A good lining gives a garment strength and a husband with a
good wife has few calamities.” If you'd been a good wife to Zhen, he and the others would never have got up to this mischief. You haven't the wit to
do
anything useful; and as for
saying
– for all the good sense that ever comes out of your mouth you might as well be a bottle! You seem to think that you have only got to sit tight and do nothing and people will praise you for your virtue!'