"If, really, I hold a place in your heart," Lin Tai-yu again reflected, "why do you, albeit what's said about gold and jade being a fit match, attach more importance to this perverse report and think nothing of what I say? Did you, when I so often broach the subject of this gold and jade, behave as if you, verily, had never heard anything about it, I would then have seen that you treat me with preference and that you don't harbour the least particle of a secret design. But how is it that the moment I allude to the topic of gold and jade, you at once lose all patience? This is proof enough that you are continuously pondering over that gold and jade, and that as soon as you hear me speak to you about them, you apprehend that I shall once more give way to conjectures, and intentionally pretend to be quite out of temper, with the deliberate idea of cajoling me!"

These two cousins had, to all appearances, once been of one and the same mind, but the many issues, which had sprung up between them, brought about a contrary result and made them of two distinct minds.

"I don't care what you do, everything is well," Pao-yu further argued, "so long as you act up to your feelings; and if you do, I shall be ever only too willing to even suffer immediate death for your sake. Whether you know this or not, doesn't matter; it's all the same. Yet were you to just do as my heart would have you, you'll afford me a clear proof that you and I are united by close ties and that you are no stranger to me!"

"Just you mind your own business," Lin Tai-yu on her side cogitated. "If you will treat me well, I'll treat you well. And what need is there to put an end to yourself for my sake? Are you not aware that if you kill yourself, I'll also kill myself? But this demonstrates that you don't wish me to be near to you, and that you really want that I should be distant to you."

It will thus be seen that the desire, by which they were both actuated, to strive and draw each other close and ever closer became contrariwise transformed into a wish to become more distant. But as it is no easy task to frame into words the manifold secret thoughts entertained by either, we will now confine ourselves to a consideration of their external manner.

The three words "a fine match," which Pao-yu heard again Lin Tai-yu p.r.o.nounce proved so revolting to him that his heart got full of disgust and he was unable to give utterance to a single syllable. Losing all control over his temper, he s.n.a.t.c.hed from his neck the jade of Spiritual Perception and, clenching his teeth, he spitefully dashed it down on the floor. "What rubbishy trash!" he cried. "I'll smash you to atoms and put an end to the whole question!"

The jade, however, happened to be of extraordinary hardness, and did not, after all, sustain the slightest injury from this single fall. When Pao-yu realised that it had not broken, he forthwith turned himself round to get the trinket with the idea of carrying out his design of smashing it, but Tai-yu divined his intention, and soon started crying.

"What's the use of all this!" she demurred, "and why, pray, do you batter that dumb thing about? Instead of smashing it, wouldn't it be better for you to come and smash me!"

But in the middle of their dispute, Tzu Chuan, Hsueh Yen and the other maids promptly interfered and quieted them. Subsequently, however, they saw how deliberately bent Pao-yu was upon breaking the jade, and they vehemently rushed up to him to s.n.a.t.c.h it from his hands. But they failed in their endeavours, and perceiving that he was getting more troublesome than he had ever been before, they had no alternative but to go and call Hsi Jen. Hsi Jen lost no time in running over and succeeded, at length, in getting hold of the trinket.

"I'm smashing what belongs to me," remarked Pao-yu with a cynical smile, "and what has that to do with you people?"

Hsi Jen noticed that his face had grown quite sallow from anger, that his eyes had a.s.sumed a totally unusual expression, and that he had never hitherto had such a fit of ill-temper and she hastened to take his hand in hers and to smilingly expostulate with him. "If you've had a tiff with your cousin," she said, "it isn't worth while flinging this down!

Had you broken it, how would her heart and face have been able to bear the mortification?"

Lin Tai-yu shed tears and listened the while to her remonstrances. Yet these words, which so corresponded with her own feelings, made it clear to her that Pao-yu could not even compare with Hsi Jen and wounded her heart so much more to the quick that she began to weep aloud. But the moment she got so vexed she found it hard to keep down the potion of boletus and the decoction, for counter-acting the effects of the sun, she had taken only a few minutes back, and with a retch she brought everything up. Tzu Chuan immediately pressed to her side and used her handkerchief to stop her mouth with. But mouthful succeeded mouthful, and in no time the handkerchief was soaked through and through.

Hsueh Yen then approached in a hurry and tapped her on the back.

"You may, of course, give way to displeasure," Tzu Chuan argued; "but you should, after all, take good care of yourself Miss. You had just taken the medicines and felt the better for them; and here you now begin vomitting again; and all because you've had a few words with our master Secundus. But should your complaint break out afresh how will Mr. Pao bear the blow?"

The moment Pao-yu caught this advice, which accorded so thoroughly with his own ideas, he found how little Tai-yu could hold her own with Tzu Chuan. And perceiving how flushed Tai-yu's face was, how her temples were swollen, how, while sobbing, she panted; and how, while crying, she was suffused with perspiration, and betrayed signs of extreme weakness, he began, at the sight of her condition, to reproach himself. "I shouldn't," he reflected, "have bandied words with her; for now that she's got into this frame of mind, I mayn't even suffer in her stead!"

The self-reproaches, however, which gnawed his heart made it impossible for him to refrain from tears, much as he fought against them. Hsi Jen saw them both crying, and while attending to Pao-yu, she too unavoidably experienced much soreness of heart. She nevertheless went on rubbing Pao-yu's hands, which were icy cold. She felt inclined to advise Pao-yu not to weep, but fearing again lest, in the first place, Pao-yu might be inwardly aggrieved, and nervous, in the next, lest she should not be dealing rightly by Tai-yu, she thought it advisable that they should all have a good cry, as they might then be able to leave off. She herself therefore also melted into tears. As for Tzu-Chuan, at one time, she cleaned the expectorated medicine; at another, she took up a fan and gently fanned Tai-yu. But at the sight of the trio plunged in perfect silence, and of one and all sobbing for reasons of their own, grief, much though she did to struggle against it, mastered her feelings too, and producing a handkerchief, she dried the tears that came to her eyes.

So there stood four inmates, face to face, uttering not a word and indulging in weeping.

Shortly, Hsi Jen made a supreme effort, and smilingly said to Pao-yu: "If you don't care for anything else, you should at least have shown some regard for those ta.s.sels, strung on the jade, and not have wrangled with Miss Lin."

Tai-yu heard these words, and, mindless of her indisposition, she rushed over, and s.n.a.t.c.hing the trinket, she picked up a pair of scissors, lying close at hand, bent upon cutting the ta.s.sels. Hsi Jen and Tzu Chuan were on the point of wresting it from her, but she had already managed to mangle them into several pieces.

"I have," sobbed Tai-yu, "wasted my energies on them for nothing; for he doesn't prize them. He's certain to find others to string some more fine ta.s.sels for him."

Hsi Jen promptly took the jade. "Is it worth while going on in this way!" she cried. "But this is all my fault for having blabbered just now what should have been left unsaid."

"Cut it, if you like!" chimed in Pao-yu, addressing himself to Tai-yu.

"I will on no account wear it, so it doesn't matter a rap."

But while all they minded inside was to create this commotion, they little dreamt that the old matrons had descried Tai-yu weep bitterly and vomit copiously, and Pao-yu again dash his jade on the ground, and that not knowing how far the excitement might not go, and whether they themselves might not become involved, they had repaired in a body to the front, and reported the occurrence to dowager lady Chia and Madame w.a.n.g, their object being to try and avoid being themselves implicated in the matter. Their old mistress and Madame w.a.n.g, seeing them make so much of the occurrence as to rush with precipitate haste to bring it to their notice, could not in the least imagine what great disaster might not have befallen them, and without loss of time they betook themselves together into the garden and came to see what the two cousins were up to.

Hsi Jen felt irritated and harboured resentment against Tzu Chuan, unable to conceive what business she had to go and disturb their old mistress and Madame w.a.n.g. But Tzu Chuan, on the other hand, presumed that it was Hsi Jen, who had gone and reported the matter to them, and she too cherished angry feelings towards Hsi Jen.

Dowager lady Chia and Madame w.a.n.g walked into the apartment. They found Pao-yu on one side saying not a word. Lin Tai-yu on the other uttering not a sound. "What's up again?" they asked. But throwing the whole blame upon the shoulders of Hsi Jen and Tzu Chuan, "why is it," they inquired, "that you were not diligent in your attendance on them. They now start a quarrel, and don't you exert yourselves in the least to restrain them?"

Therefore with obloquy and hard words they rated the two girls for a time in such a way that neither of them could put in a word by way of reply, but felt compelled to listen patiently. And it was only after dowager lady Chia had taken Pao-yu away with her that things quieted down again.

One day pa.s.sed. Then came the third of the moon. This was Hsueh Pan's birthday, so in their house a banquet was spread and preparations made for a performance; and to these the various inmates of the Chia mansion went. But as Pao-yu had so hurt Tai-yu's feelings, the two cousins saw nothing whatever of each other, and conscience-stricken, despondent and unhappy, as he was at this time could he have had any inclination to be present at the plays? Hence it was that he refused to go on the pretext of indisposition.

Lin Tai-yu had got, a couple of days back, but a slight touch of the sun and naturally there was nothing much the matter with her. When the news however reached her that he did not intend to join the party, "If with his weakness for wine and for theatricals," she pondered within herself, "he now chooses to stay away, instead of going, why, that quarrel with me yesterday must be at the bottom of it all. If this isn't the reason, well then it must be that he has no wish to attend, as he sees that I'm not going either. But I should on no account have cut the ta.s.sels from that jade, for I feel sure he won't wear it again. I shall therefore have to string some more on to it, before he puts it on."

On this account the keenest remorse gnawed her heart.

Dowager lady Chia saw well enough that they were both under the influence of temper. "We should avail ourselves of this occasion," she said to herself, "to go over and look at the plays, and as soon as the two young people come face to face, everything will be squared."

Contrary to her expectations neither of them would volunteer to go. This so exasperated their old grandmother that she felt vexed with them. "In what part of my previous existence could an old sufferer like myself,"

she exclaimed, "have incurred such retribution that my destiny is to come across these two troublesome new-fledged foes! Why, not a single day goes by without their being instrumental in worrying my mind! The proverb is indeed correct which says: 'that people who are not enemies are not brought together!' But shortly my eyes shall be closed, this breath of mine shall be snapped, and those two enemies will be free to cause trouble even up to the very skies; for as my eyes will then loose their power of vision, and my heart will be void of concern, it will really be nothing to me. But I couldn't very well stifle this breath of life of mine!"

While inwardly a prey to resentment, she also melted into tears.

These words were brought to the ears of Pao-yu and Tai-yu. Neither of them had hitherto heard the adage: "people who are not enemies are not brought together," so when they suddenly got to know the line, it seemed as if they had apprehended abstraction. Both lowered their heads and meditated on the subtle sense of the saying. But unconsciously a stream of tears rolled down their cheeks. They could not, it is true, get a glimpse of each other; yet as the one was in the Hsiao Hsiang lodge, standing in the breeze, bedewed with tears, and the other in the I Hung court, facing the moon and heaving deep sighs, was it not, in fact, a case of two persons living in two distinct places, yet with feelings emanating from one and the same heart?

Hsi Jen consequently tendered advice to Pao-yu. "You're a million times to blame," she said, "it's you who are entirely at fault! For when some time ago the pages in the establishment, wrangled with their sisters, or when husband and wife fell out, and you came to hear anything about it, you blew up the lads, and called them fools for not having the heart to show some regard to girls; and now here you go and follow their lead.

But to-morrow is the fifth day of the moon, a great festival, and will you two still continue like this, as if you were very enemies? If so, our venerable mistress will be the more angry, and she certainly will be driven sick! I advise you therefore to do what's right by suppressing your spite and confessing your fault, so that we should all be on the same terms as. .h.i.therto. You here will then be all right, and so will she over there."

Pao-yu listened to what she had to say; but whether he fell in with her views or not is not yet ascertained; yet if you, reader, choose to know, we will explain in the next chapter.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

Pao-ch'ai avails herself of the excuse afforded her by a fan to administer a couple of raps.

While Ch'un Ling traces, in a absent frame of mind, the outlines of the character Ch'iang, a looker-on appears on the scene.

Lin Tai-yu herself, for we will now resume our narrative, was also, ever since her tiff with Pao-yu, full of self-condemnation, yet as she did not see why she should run after him, she continued, day and night, as despondent as she would have been had she lost some thing or other belonging to her.

Tzu Chuan surmised her sentiments. "As regards what happened the other day," she advised her, "you were, after all, Miss, a little too hasty; for if others don't understand that temperament of Pao-yu's, have you and I, surely, also no idea about it? Besides, haven't there been already one or two rows on account of that very jade?"

"Ts'ui!" exclaimed Tai-yu. "Have you come, on behalf of others, to find fault with me? But how ever was I hasty?"

"Why did you," smiled Tzu Chuan, "take the scissors and cut that ta.s.sel when there was no good reason for it? So isn't Pao-yu less to blame than yourself, Miss? I've always found his behaviour towards you, Miss, without a fault. It's all that touchy disposition of yours, which makes you so often perverse, that induces him to act as he does."

Lin Tai-yu had every wish to make some suitable reply, when she heard some one calling at the door. Tzu Chuan discerned the tone of voice.

"This sounds like Pao-yu's voice," she smiled. "I expect he's come to make his apologies."

"I won't have any one open the door," Tai-yu cried at these words.

"Here you are in the wrong again, Miss," Tzu Chuan observed. "How will it ever do to let him get a sunstroke and come to some harm on a day like this, and under such a scorching sun?"

Saying this, she speedily walked out and opened the door. It was indeed Pao-yu. While ushering him in, she gave him a smile. "I imagined," she said, "that you would never again put your foot inside our door, Master Secundus. But here you are once more and quite unexpectedly!"

"You have by dint of talking," Pao-yu laughed, "made much ado of nothing; and why shouldn't I come, when there's no reason for me to keep away? Were I even to die, my spirit too will come a hundred times a day!

But is cousin quite well?"