In the morning the doctor came again. He found no change in his patient, who still lay open-eyed on her bed, evidently thinking, though she did not talk. It hurt her too much to talk. She seemed content when the doctor assured her Ronald was still in Paoling and in no immediate hurry to go.
"You can bring him with you the next time you come," she said.
The doctor looked rather anxiously toward Nancy.
"You must take some rest yourself, my child," he said. "I can't have two sick people on my hands."
The old t'ai-t'ai seemed to understand what he was saying.
"Yes, tell her to sleep," she insisted; "she must sleep. I shall be all right. My daughter can look after me."
Reluctantly Nancy gave up her post to her stepmother. She was sure she could not sleep. There were too many problems on her mind. Yet such was her need of rest that her eyes closed from sheer heaviness and nothing more did she know till she awoke late in the afternoon, surprised to find the storm abated and clear, cold sunshine gleaming through the paper windows of her room. Hurriedly she dressed and opened the door. The t'ai-t'ai turned her eyes when the girl entered and greeted her with a faint smile.
"Death is a slow business," she said, with the coolest of voices. She seemed to talk with more ease. Nancy did not guess how she had taken advantage of her own absence to defy the doctor's orders and speak out her mind to her daughter.
"What are you going to do with this girl when I die?" she had begun.
"Do?" echoed Nancy's stepmother, "what should I do? I am not her husband. I am not her mother-in-law, am I? What should I do?"
"I asked you what you are going to do with her," repeated the old woman, with an acid inflection to the question.
"What do you want done with her?" countered the daughter, anxious to see where her mother's words were leading.
"I want you to let her go. She does not belong here. Ming-te has a wife; he is contented. I want you to send her back to her own people."
"But that would cause scandal."
"Scandal, nonsense! No more scandal than was caused by your bringing her here in the first place or by your keeping her here. No one thinks scandal of what a foreigner does. People simply say they are crazy—that is the end of it. She will be forgotten in a week. That would be much more comfortable for all of you than to have to keep explaining her presence."
"You will tire yourself if you talk too much," remonstrated the younger woman. "It is not good for your sickness."
"What do I care what is good for my sickness?" exclaimed the t'ai-t'ai. "I am going to die anyway. I shall have plenty of time to be silent then."
"You mustn't say such things," spoke out the other, pretending to be shocked. "You are not going to die. This cold that you are suffering from, that will soon pass. You have lived too long to be snuffed out by the first winter gale."
"Don't you think this is a time to be honest?" asked her mother.
The other woman avoided an answer.
"Are you going to let her go, as I asked you?" went on the old t'ai-t'ai.
"Oh, there will be plenty of time to talk of that presently. This is no occasion to discuss such important plans. It's not for me to decide, anyway, what we ought to do with Nancy. That is for the others to determine."
"What you decide, they too will decide."
"You must have your broth now," said the daughter, trying to make light of the obstinate way her mother clung to her demands. "Why vex yourself about these things now? To-morrow will be time enough for a decision. There are so many things to be considered. It's no use being too hasty."
"There is one thing to be considered, her happiness and yours. For don't deceive yourself by thinking you will be happy if you keep the girl. We can't flaunt our spite in the face of heaven. And I tell you this marriage is against heaven itself; I have seen and I know. And everyone who has anything to do with it is cursed. What happened to her father? He died, the day of her marriage. And before another year is out, if you keep her here, you will be dead too. Are you going to release her or are you going to force me back from the dead to set her free? You have found me a stubborn old woman in life and you will find me more stubborn in death."
Not only had the voice of the sick woman gained its full power, but the old magical ascendancy of her will had asserted its strength. Her threat stirred the superstitious heart of her daughter. The boldness which had been gaining ground at the expense of her mother's weakness retreated again before a fear she did not know how to dispel, a vague intangible fear, here one minute, there the next, always eluding her when she tried to grapple with it, when she tried to laugh it down, the fear that a curse did in truth lie heavy upon Nancy's marriage to Ming-te. She remembered with terror how they had labored to straighten out Herrick's stiffened limbs.
"When do you want us to send her away?" she asked, after a sullen pause.
"When she asks to go," answered the t'ai-t'ai.
The daughter ransacked her mind for some pretext to avoid a promise, but she knew her mother too well of old, knew that she was not easily hoodwinked when she wanted a direct answer.
"Ah well, it can't be helped," she said finally. "If you really order me to do this, what can I do but obey? I will not keep her here. I will send her off."
The old woman gave a sigh of relief and said no more. The task of overriding her daughter, short and sharp though it had been, had cost too much of her strength. She had summoned every atom of her indomitable will to cower her adversary into making this unwilling promise. She had spoken as though the fortunes of life and death, of heaven and hell, were in her hands, and so extensive had been her mastery of this grumbling family that even the self-willed daughter flinched from the shadow of her curse. But her strength was failing; she knew how much had been spent in this passionate plea for Nancy; in her hour of weakness they might lose their dread of her temper, grow bold like village mongrels round a dying wolf. She lay quiet, husbanding what force remained, determined to keep her lifelong spell hard upon them to the end.
Her daughter felt it was safe to leave the patient for an hour. She got into long discussion with Nancy's mother-in-law over the promise which had been wrung out of her by the t'ai-t'ai. They talked the matter to and fro, back and forth, nosing out ways to evade the spirit while they kept the letter of this pledge. Away from the sick room, in the still cold sunshine which had followed the storm, the death of the old lady who had ruled them so long did not really seem so near at hand as to alarm them. Nor did it seem so in the sick room itself when Nancy appeared and found the t'ai-t'ai apparently resting.
Nancy felt stronger after her sleep and could not understand that her mistress had not been refreshed at the same time. When the sick woman said, "Death is a slow business," the girl was inclined to treat the remark lightly. The house seemed comfortingly peaceful after the wind which had been raging round the courtyards and tearing tiles loose from the eaves.
But the doctor, when he came, was not so well satisfied. He looked at the thermometer, and he shook his head.
"You have been exerting yourself," he said; "there is more fever here than there should be."
"Of course there is fever," scoffed the patient; "how can one be sick and not have fever?"
As for exerting herself, she laughed at the notion. What exertion could an old woman make when she was kept tied to her bed?
"Did you think I would jump up and play shuttlecock like a schoolboy?"
She dismissed the subject of her infirmities. "Have you brought him?" she asked.
The doctor knew whom she meant. "Yes, I brought him," he said, "but I am not sure it would be good for you to see him."
"It would not be good for me not to see him."
"Very well, have your own way," consented the doctor, humoring her stubbornness, "but don't go wasting your strength with too many words."
He went to the door and called Ronald, who had been waiting in a room outside. Nancy, standing at the opposite side of the bed, looked at the newcomer. She had not expected him. Her face flushed with embarrassment. She dared not lift her eyes again, but tried quietly to withdraw from the room.
"No, you must stay," said the t'ai-t'ai, who had observed her confusion with a swift glance. "I may need you to explain what I wish to say."
Then she turned her attention to Ronald, giving him a long exacting stare. It was evident she did not quite know how to appraise him. She was not used to foreigners, for Nancy, although she spoke of her theoretically as a Westerner, in the intimacy of her affection she always regarded as Chinese. So she faltered for a moment at her first sight of Ronald, vaguely disappointed, till she saw that he was transparently honest and kind and that he loved Nancy; then she took refuge in Timothy Herrick's judgment,—who, after all, was better able than he to judge a man of his own race?—and thought, with an inward chuckle, that if the gods themselves had come to claim Nancy she would not have deemed the wisest and the handsomest of them good enough.
She looked again at Nancy's blushing face.
"Ha, my child tenderly displays the reflection of the sun," she quoted, in a voice too low for any but Nancy to hear, and laughed contentedly to see the girl blush even more. "Never mind, never mind, tut, tut, tut, tut, it is good to be young. I won't ask you to translate for me."
This office she imposed upon the doctor.
"Tell him," she said, "that Nancy is free to go. I am the head of this family and I have given my permission, and I have the promise of her stepmother for the rest of them, and I have her own promise that she will go. This marriage was a mistake. We disobeyed heaven when we made it. I have learned some things I did not know before—he ought to understand what I mean—and I cannot die with peace in my heart until I have set this mistake right. Is that clear?"
It was entirely clear.
"She can go this very minute; that would be the best plan," said the old t'ai-t'ai playfully. "Will you go now, Nancy?"
Nancy shook her head back and forth quickly like a punished child refusing to be good.
"There, you see," exclaimed the woman, half jesting, half sorry, "you see how stubborn and self-willed she is. Now that I have become old and helpless even she won't obey me."
A deep silence followed, during which everyone seemed wondering what to say.
"No, it's no use," went on the t'ai-t'ai at last, "I've tried my hardest to persuade her to go. But she refuses. She must wait till I am dead. He will stay in Paoling?" she asked anxiously.
"Yes," the doctor answered for Ronald.
"Good. He will not need to wait long."
Even the doctor, cheerful as he had been, was not brave enough to contradict her with a lie. He had directed Nancy in all that she could do—all that anyone could do, now, he thought to himself. Promising to return early in the morning, he took Ronald away with him.
Ronald could not speak. His brain carried a picture of the marvelous old woman lying shrunken and helpless on the couch, her face burning with fever, her eyes, wistful and bright, searching him for every sign that he was fit to marry Nancy. The girl he loved so utterly seemed almost a shadow in comparison; he had only ghostlike glimpses of her averted face. With a deep groan he wondered if he were ever going to win her.
As soon as the doctor had left, Nancy's stepmother and her mother-in-law came to inquire what he had said, but the t'ai-t'ai did not encourage them to stay. She was doing as well as one could hope, she told them; she was tired and did not want to talk. She knew that her daughter would be filled with curiosity about Ronald's visit, but she would explain nothing, only asking to be left alone, with Nancy watching her.
Ronald's appearance had indeed excited the stepmother, who remembered him angrily as Herrick's executor. She hated him because of the trust that had been shown him by her husband, the powers that had been given him in her rightful place.
"So that's the game!" she exclaimed. "That's what the shameless girl has been working for, is it? That's why she has turned my poor old mother's head and made her play the fool in her dotage!"
She choked in her wrath.
"Fancy her cunning in getting that meddlesome barbarian here. Who ever heard the like to her treachery? And he, not satisfied with stealing our money, now dares to steal our wives out of our houses."
She raved in her hatred of Nancy. Every grudge she could rake up from the past, every quarrel Nancy had had with Li-an, every childish offense went into a score which, if she had dared, she would have torn the girl limb from limb to erase. "That miserable promise!" she kept repeating, vexing herself half mad to find ways of breaking it.
The victim of her hatred stood profoundly quiet beside the bed of the dying woman. The latter had heaved a great sigh when she found herself at last with only Nancy watching her.
"I have done all I can," she said. "Your life is in your own hands now, my jewel. If I were only strong enough to take you away from here with my own arms—I am so afraid for you, I am still so afraid for you. But I can do no more. I am no good. I am too old."
These were the first despondent words Nancy had ever heard her proud old mistress use. She dared not weep, but sat down and put her hand on the sick woman's forehead, trying to cool the heat of the fever, to repay something of the debt of gentle caresses she owed.
"Sing to me," said the t'ai-t'ai at last.
Of all the songs she knew, Nancy could think of none but the song Kuei-lien had sung to her the night before her wedding. It had gone ringing through her head for days afterward and now, when she knew but would not confess her mistress was dying, nothing else could so contain her fear and her love.
Nancy's voice was not Kuei-lien's. It was more closely a child's voice, artless, straightforward, and simple, but she sang very clearly, very tenderly, till even the candles seemed to stop flickering and the old woman shut her eyes, letting her mind drift into contented reverie from the peace she got in knowing that Nancy was near.
"Swift the summer sun in his day,Swift the autumn moon in her night,Slow the winter frost with its blight,Trampling golden leaves from its way.
"Gold youth, scarlet love, each must fade,Moon and stars cease shining in the night,Winter snows shall long glimmer white,Scarlet leaves and gold low are laid."
Nancy stopped. She wanted to hide her face again, but there was no place to hide. She had to bear up for the sake of her friend. But the song unloosed such overwhelming memories that she had to sit speechless, tensely careful not to move lest she let free the tears which were poised imminently behind the straining floodgates of her eyes.
The t'ai-t'ai reached for her hand.
"I have lived seventy-three years," she said, "and in all those seventy-three years this is the most peaceful moment I have known. I don't want you to offer me anything else, child—incense, food, money, I don't want them, nothing else but one thing, your happiness. If you want me to rest, you must bring me that."
She sank back in the bed as if to sleep more comfortably. Her eyes closed. Her mind seemed to slip away. The heat of the fever mounted. Nancy busied herself with the expedients the doctor had suggested, but they brought no relief. Again and again she begged the sick woman to give some sign that she heard, but she got no response. At last in despair she woke up her stepmother. The woman came rushing in, half dressed, took one look.
"Ai, she is dying," she cried, and rushed out to call the family.
They had all come in readiness for the worst. It was only the work of a few minutes before they were crowding round the bedside, weeping in terror as they watched the old t'ai-t'ai's struggles for breath. Their wailing filled the room, deafening the last pangs of the dying woman.
Suddenly she sat bolt upright and looked round with the caustic look they knew so well.
"Humbugs!" she snorted in a cold scornful voice which struck with double sharpness on their ears because of the sudden hush in the chamber. "Humbugs!"
Then she dropped back with a gasp on her pillow. The old t'ai-t'ai had spoken her mind to the last.
There was a shameful pause, as though the family waited one of her familiar scoldings and could not believe she was dead. Her eldest son was the first to rouse himself. During the unspeakable silence which still prevailed he got up slowly and lighted incense and white candles beside the bed while everyone watched him, spellbound. Not till the first spluttering glow of the candles could they move.
When at last they realized that the spirit of the old t'ai-t'ai was being lighted on her way, they went mad. Everyone began shouting and crying and tearing his hair; the women beat their breasts and forced tears from their eyes. The room was not large enough to hold the echo of their weeping. Yet in the midst of this paroxysm Nancy could hear her name called. She looked round. Her stepmother was beckoning to her. The others were so taken up by their own grief that they paid no heed when Nancy stumbled over them to emerge from the frenzied circle of mourners.
"I have some work for you to do," whispered her stepmother, giving her orders about things she was to fetch.
Nancy stole out of the room unobserved and went blindly through the dark house, hearing the din of the weeping family jangling across every cold courtyard. She was too numb with sorrow to think about herself or her own fate. She wanted to weep out her heart beside the body of her mistress. Nothing else at this moment could satisfy her. She found a candle and groped into the room to which her stepmother had sent her. Suddenly she heard a noise and turned. Only a pace behind her stood the woman herself. Nancy saw, with a frightened glance, that she had no good intent in her mind; she saw her glaring, like a panther ready to spring.
"I promised you should go," said the woman harshly, "and you're going—now! You are not going back there, do you hear me? You are not one of us, you don't belong to this family, and you shall not weep with us just because you managed to addle the brains of my old mother. You killed her. You are not fit for us to wipe our feet on. Out you go, I say! Go and play the whore with your foreign friend! You are a stench in our nostrils. You slut, you filthy tortoise, you dirty bawd, what right have you to think you can go in there and corrupt the dead with your false tears?"
Nancy was staggered by this abuse. It meant only one thing in her mind, that she was being robbed of her place beside the body of her protector. Her heart could not grasp the idea of being torn away with this cruel, this unbelievable abruptness. She cared nothing for herself, nothing for her own future; she would have bartered the freedom of a lifetime just to be allowed to cling to that lifeless body; she was lost to all reason; she sobbed for the privilege of being close to her dead mistress as though more than her life hung upon it. She could not believe that her stepmother was in earnest; she could not believe that she, who had shared the golden beauty of these last days in the company of her beloved old t'ai-t'ai, should be driven away like an outcast, like a creature lower than the dogs which slunk through the open doors. She opened her mouth in protest, ready to offer herself as a slave, but the woman fetched her a stinging blow across the lips.
"Your words have done enough mischief in this house," she jeered. "I won't hear more of them."
Nancy drew back. The candle shook in her hand, throwing ominous, weird shadows across her face. She was an animal which has been wounded and does not know the meaning of the violence dealt to it. Then from far away, like a rising gust of wind, came the dismal lamentation of the mourners. With a start Nancy dropped the candle. An overpowering impulse seized her to rush back, back to her mistress, to throw herself on the floor, to throw herself on the ground by the bed, and to weep. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else must stand in her way. She was mad. She was indeed an animal, an animal trapped, beating out its life in its panic to get the one thing it desired.
She tried to rush past her stepmother, but there was light enough from the dim lantern by the door to keep the woman from being taken unawares.
"No, you don't go back," she shrieked, "not a step do you go back. Out you go, I say, out! out! out!"
She seized the girl with her hands, clawing her face, tearing her hair. She was as mad as Nancy and stronger, and she had her sister-in-law to help her. The latter had grabbed Nancy's arms and was pulling them back till the pain shot like tongues of flame through her tortured body. Inch by inch they strained toward the door, fighting with teeth and nails and feet, their breath, too spent for words, coming and going in convulsive gasps.
Nancy writhed and twisted to get out of the grasp of her tormentors, insensible to more pain, the need to get back to the side of her dead friend possessing her like a legion of devils. But the women were more than she could stand against. Slowly they dragged her across the floor; she contested every inch, but they beat down her strength, they pommeled her and bruised her and tore her clothes into long rags, they struck her across the head till she was almost senseless. Desperately she struggled, but uselessly, for the stepmother grasped her throat with sinewy hands and, pressing tighter and tighter, stifled her till her eyes were ready to leap from their sockets and her lungs choked vainly for air. Then they opened the great gate, swinging it wide on its creaking axles, and flung the girl, like a heap of discarded rubbish, into the street.
She was not dead. The cold air forced itself at the price of agony down her throat. The blood began moving again. But her mind had still one single insane thought, to get back to the deathbed, so as soon as she was able to pull herself up she plunged against the barred door, throwing herself again and again upon its unyielding boards, crying, as she thought, with a voice which could be heard for miles, but which actually was only the hoarse rattle of a whisper. She did not think of Ronald or of anything else. She forgot the iron cold clamping its grip on her veins, chains of steely frost from which no prisoner, once bound, could escape. She wanted to get back to her mistress, back to her mistress or to die. And what the women had begun she was in a fair way to complete when a sudden spell of weariness halted her, a spell of deep warm peace. She felt the hand of the old t'ai-t'ai on her shoulder.
"Do you care?" she heard her voice saying. "Ah, my child, my child, why do you care?"
It was all right now. She could sleep and be comforted.