“Don’t say that,” Ximen Qing said, laughing, “it was not that I didn’t want him to go, but I was afraid he didn’t know his way about the Imperial Tutor’s palace. That’s the only reason I sent Laibao, and kept him at home. I’ll see if I can’t find some business for him here.”
“What sort of business will you find for him?” Huilian cried. “Tell me.” “I will get a manager for him and set them up in a wineshop, not far away.”
This delighted Huilian. She went back to her room and told Laiwang all about it. Then they waited for Ximen Qing’s orders. One day Ximen called Laiwang to the front court. Lying on a table were six packets of silver. “My son,” Ximen Qing said, “you must have had a very trying journey from Hangzhou. I did mean to send you to the Eastern Capital, but I thought perhaps you didn’t know Cai’s palace well enough, so I decided to send Laibao instead. Here are six packets of silver, three hundred taels altogether. Take them, find someone to act as your manager, and set up a wineshop somewhere not far away. You will bring the interest dutifully to me every month. That seems to me the best thing we can do for you.”
Laiwang knelt down and kowtowed. He took the six packets of silver to his room. “He is using this business as a trap,” he said to his wife. “He has given me these three hundred taels, and he says I am to find a manager and start a wineshop.”
“You are a funny creature,” his wife said. “It takes more than one shovel to dig a well; you must take your time. You have a business now and you will have to settle down, do your duty, and give up drinking so much wine. It’s that which makes you talk so much nonsense.”
“Well, I’m going to the street to find a partner,” Laiwang said. He told his wife to put the silver in a chest. He went to the street but, though he looked about till late, he found nobody to suit him. Instead, he got very drunk and went home again. His wife sent him to bed, and, soon afterwards, Yuxiao called her away to the inner court.
Laiwang slept for a long time. It was the first night watch when he awoke. He was not yet sober and his head whirled. Suddenly he heard someone outside the window calling softly: “Brother Laiwang, why don’t you get up and see what your wife is doing? That bad fellow has taken her to the garden again and, while you are asleep here, suspecting nothing, they are having a fine time.” This made Laiwang wake up. He opened his eyes to see who was there. Huilian was not in the room. He decided that the voice must have been Xue’e’s, and that she had come to tell him of something she had seen.
“You will be unfaithful before my very face, will you?” he cried, jumping out of bed in a fury. He opened the door and ran straight to the garden. He had just reached the garden gate when, suddenly, a stool was thrown out of the darkness and he was knocked down. At the same time a knife fell clattering on the ground. Servants came running from all directions, shouting: Thief! Thief!” and some of them pounced on him.
“It is only Laiwang,” he cried. “I have come to look for my wife. Why are you seizing me?”
Nobody would listen to him, and he was dragged, struggling and fighting, to the great hall. There, among many brilliant lights, Ximen Qing sat, shouting, “Bring him in!”
“I woke up,” Laiwang said, kneeling down, “and I couldn’t see my wife anywhere, so I went to find her. What have I done to be seized and treated like a thief?”
Laixing produced the knife for his master to see. Ximen Qing cried angrily, “Animals one can deal with, but human beings are impossible. This fellow is a murderer. There was I, thinking he had just come back from Hangzhou, and giving him three hundred taels to set him up in business. Then, in the depth of night, he comes to murder me. If that was not what you were after,” he said to Laiwang, “what were you doing with this knife?” He shouted to the attendants: “Take him to his room and bring me back my three hundred taels.” The servants took Laiwang away.
Huilian was talking to Yuxiao in the inner court when she heard the news. She rushed at once to her room and, seeing what was happening, began to cry. “You went to bed drunk,” she said. “What need was there for you to get up and start looking for me? Now you have fallen into a trap.”
They opened the chest, took out the six packets of silver, and went back to the hall. Ximen Qing unwrapped the packets and examined the silver in the light of a lamp. Only one contained genuine silver, the others had nothing in them but tin.
“How dare you change my silver?” Ximen cried. “What have you done with my money? Tell me at once.”
“Master,” Laiwang sobbed, “you very kindly entrusted the silver to me so that I might set up in business. How could I think of cheating you and putting tin in its place?”
“You took a knife to murder me,” Ximen cried. “Here it is. It is no use your trying to make excuses.” He called forward Laixing, who knelt down and testified: “The other day, outside, didn’t you say before a number of people that you were going to kill Master because he hadn’t found anything for you to do?”
Laiwang gaped, his mouth wide open. “Now,” Ximen Qing said, “the case is clear. The stolen property, the witness, the knife and the staves are all here. Chain him and put him into the gatehouse,” he said to the servants. “Tomorrow I will write an accusation and send him before the magistrate.”
At this moment, Huilian, her hair in disorder and her dress disarranged, ran into the hall and threw herself on her knees before Ximen Qing. “Father,” she cried, “this is your doing. He was looking for me quite peacefully. Why should he be taken and treated as a thief? As for those six packets of silver, I was looking after them, and the original seal was never even broken. It cannot possibly have been changed. Though you may wish to get rid of the man, do not forget the justice of Heaven. What has he done? Why are you sending him to be beaten? Where are you going to send him now?”
Ximen Qing smiled sweetly upon her. “This has nothing to do with you, my good woman,” he said. “Stand up. He has no regard for propriety, and he has been exceedingly impudent for some time. Now he has even attempted to murder me. But, of course, you know nothing about this. Be calm, you are not concerned in the matter at all.” He said to Laian: “Take your sister very gently to her room, and see that she is not alarmed in any way.”
Huilian, however, would not rise from her knees. “How stony-hearted you are, Father,” she said. “If you will not listen to the priest’s voice, at least hearken to the voice of Buddha. Won’t you do this for me when I ask so earnestly? Though he did get drunk, he really would never have dreamed of doing a thing like this.” Ximen Qing grew impatient and told Laian to pick her up and take her back to her room.
Next day Ximen wrote an accusation and told Laixing, as the witness, to take the papers and Laiwang to the court. “Upon a certain day,” the accusation ran, “this man got drunk, and, in the middle of the night, made to kill his master with a knife. He is further charged with fraudulently changing money, etc.” The party was about to set off for the court when Yueniang came into the hall. She pleaded earnestly with Ximen Qing. “If the slave has done wrong,” she said, “we can deal with him here, and settle it ourselves without bothering the officers and disturbing the court.”
“Woman,” Ximen shouted, rolling his eyes, “you have no idea of what is fitting. This slave deliberately tried to kill me. Do you come here and ask me to forgive him?” He would not listen to her, and shouted to the servants: “Away with him to the court.” Yueniang flushed and withdrew.
“What a cantankerous fellow the master of the house is,” she said to Yulou and the others. “There is a nine-tailed fox at work somewhere. I wonder whose advice he is taking in this business. He is sending the slave away quite unjustifiably. It is all very well for him to say the slave is a thief, but he must prove it. Putting a man into a paper coffin like this is no way to behave. He is an unprincipled tyrant.” Then Huilian came and knelt down, weeping.
“Stand up, my child,” Yueniang said, “they can’t execute your husband when they have examined him. That villain has been drinking
something to make him crazy; he won’t listen to a word I say. His wife, it would seem, is about of as much account as a private soldier in the army.”
“Just now, your master is in a temper,” Yulou said to the woman. “We can only win him over by degrees. Don’t worry. Go to your room.”
Laiwang was taken to the court. Ximen Qing had taken the precaution of sending Daian with a hundred measures of rice to Magistrate Xia and Captain He. They accepted the present. They took their places in the hall of audience and Laixing presented the accusation. The magistrates were told that Laiwang had been given a sum of money with which to establish a business, but that the sight of the silver had put the idea into his head of replacing it by tin. Then, it was said, he became afraid lest his master should find out, and, in the middle of the night, he took a knife and went creeping to the hall to murder his master. The two officers angrily summoned Laiwang before them. He knelt down and pleaded: “If you, heaven-born officers, will permit me to speak, I shall be able to explain everything; but if you will not, I dare not say a word.”
“Now, fellow,” Magistrate Xia said, “the stolen property and the evidence are both here. It is no use your attempting to clear yourself. All we want from you is the truth. Then, perhaps, we shall not be so hard on you.”
Laiwang began to tell how Ximen Qing sent a piece of blue satin to his wife, Huilian, and had seduced her. “Now,” he said, “he has accused me of this crime, so that he can get me out of the way and enjoy my wife as he pleases.”
Magistrate Xia shouted at him and ordered the attendants to strike him on the mouth.
“You slave,” he cried, “this is all part of your plot to murder your master. If it were not for him, you would not have a wife, and now he has given you a business as well. Yet instead of trying to repay his kindness, you get drunk, sneak into his bedroom in the middle of the night, with murder in your heart. Why, if all servants were like you, nobody would dare to keep one.”
Laiwang went on saying that he was innocent, but the magistrate called upon Laixing to give his evidence, and, after that, there was nothing more he could say.
The magistrate ordered his attendants to pick out the cruelest thumb-screws they could find and apply them to Laiwang. Then he ordered twenty strokes of the weightiest bamboos. The poor man’s skin was broken and his flesh torn. Blood poured from him. After this the jailers were told to put him into prison. Laian and Laixing went home and gave Ximen Qing a full account of the affair. Ximen was delighted. He gave orders that none of the servants should take bedclothes to Laiwang or even so much as a scrap of food. Moreover, they were not to tell Huilian that her husband had been beaten. All they were to say was that he would be out again in a few days.
After Laiwang’s arrest, Huilian refused to dress her hair or wash her face. She would do nothing but shut herself in her room and cry, taking neither tea nor food. This alarmed Ximen Qing, and he sent Yuxiao and Ben the Fourth’s wife several times to reason with her.
“Don’t worry about your husband,” they would say. “He got drunk and talked wildly, but our master has only sent him to prison to cool his heels for a few days. He will have him out again soon.” Huilian did not believe them. She sent Laian to the prison with some food, and questioned him when he came back. He told her the same story. “My brother came before the magistrates, but they did not punish him. He says you must not worry about him; he will be out in two or three days.”
After this, Huilian dried her tears, and every day painted her eyebrows carefully, powdered her face, and resumed her old lively ways.
One day, when Ximen Qing passed her door on his way home from somewhere, Huilian, who was standing under the eaves, called to him: “There is nobody in my room, Father. Won’t you come in and sit down for a while?” Ximen went in and talked to her.
“My child,” he said, still keeping up the pretense, “your mind ought to be quite at ease now. For your sake I have written to the court, and he has not received a single blow. He must stay in prison a day or two to teach him a lesson, and then he shall come out and I’ll set him up in business.”
Huilian threw her arms around his neck. “Dearest,” she cried, “if you love me, let him come out soon. I don’t care whether you set him up in business or not, but when he comes out, I will see he keeps away from drink, and he cannot object if you decide to send him away. If that is not good enough, find another wife for him and all will be well. I have not belonged to him for a long time.”
“Very well, my precious one,” Ximen said, “I am going to buy the house across the road that belongs to Master Qiao, and I will set aside three rooms for you there. When you are established there, we shall have greater freedom to enjoy ourselves.”
“Do just what you like, darling,” the woman cried. When they had said what they had to say, she closed the door. In the summer months, she wore nothing but an open skirt without trousers, so that, whenever she came together with Ximen Qing, he had only to pull aside the skirt and proceed. Then the girdle was unloosed and the jade treasure of Chen Fei disclosed: eyebrows with all the fragrance of Han Shu were brought near together. They were like a pair of love birds flying shoulder to shoulder, or the meeting of clouds and rain.
Huilian was wearing a perfume satchel of fine silk, embroidered in silver. There were fir and cypress leaves in it, and some fragrant herbs, and on it were embroidered the four words: “delicate,” “fragrant,” “beautiful” and “seductive.” She gave it to Ximen Qing. He was so delighted that his one regret was that he could not there and then make oath that he would live and die together with her. He took a few taels of silver from his sleeve and gave them to her to buy delicacies, saying several times: “Don’t worry any longer, or you will make yourself ill. I’ll write to his Lordship Xia tomorrow, and have him set free.” They talked for a while, and then Ximen Qing became alarmed lest anyone should come, and hurriedly went away. Now that she had extracted this promise from him, Huilian went once more to the inner court and made merry with the maids and serving women.
Yulou heard of this and went to tell Jinlian. “Sooner or later,” she said, “Father will set the fellow free. He is going to buy Master Qiao’s house opposite, and install the woman there. She is to have three rooms and a maid, silver headdresses and nets. She will be as good as we are. Did you ever hear of such a thing? And the Great Lady will do nothing to prevent it.”
When Jinlian heard this, she flew into a fury. A dark flush deepened the redness of her cheeks. “Don’t you imagine,” she said, “that he will be able to do exactly what he likes! Here and now I tell you that if I let that thievish whore become Ximen Qing’s seventh wife... my name is not Pan.”
“Our husband is a bad lot,” Yulou said, “and the Great Lady does nothing to keep him in order. As for us, we cannot fly, we can only walk. What can we do to stop him?”
“You haven’t a good enough opinion of yourself,” Jinlian said. “Why do you think we are alive? To live a hundred years so that others can make a meal of us? No, if he doesn’t do what I tell him, I shall kill myself, and he will be responsible. I’m not far from it now.”
Yulou laughed. “I’m afraid I’m not very brave. I haven’t the courage to make him angry. I’ll watch and see whether you’re clever enough to deal with him.”
That night Ximen Qing was sitting in his study in the Hall of the Kingfisher, about to send for his son-in-law to write a letter to Magistrate Xia. Jinlian suddenly appeared in front of him.
“What letter is this you are going to get Brother Chen to write?” she asked, leaning over the table.
Ximen Qing could not hide anything from her. “I have decided to let Laiwang come out of prison, when he has been beaten,” he said. One of the boys was going to fetch Chen Jingji, but Jinlian stopped him.
“You flatter yourself,” she said to Ximen, “that you are a very fine fellow, but, actually, you steer your course according to the wind and go wherever the current takes you. You will not do what I tell you, but you
listen to everything that thievish strumpet says. What do you think you’re doing? You may feed her on honey and sugar every day, but it will be her husband she really thinks about. Now listen to me. If you set that slave free you won’t find it such an easy matter to enjoy his wife. There will be nothing to prevent his making a scandal. If you keep her here she will be neither one thing nor another. How do you propose to treat her? If you make her your concubine, he will be here: if she is to remain his wife, you have already made her so conceited that her airs and graces are unbearable to us all. As for the plan of keeping her for yourself and finding another wife for him, what is going to happen when you are sitting somewhere together and he comes in to serve you? Can he be anything but furious? And, when she sees him, is she to stand up or remain seated?”
“The whole thing is most improper, and, if it gets about, I hardly need say that all our friends and kinsmen will think very badly of you. Indeed, the whole household will look down upon you. If the master beam is not in position, the rafters cannot be expected to keep their place. If you are in earnest about the matter, you must not stick at a little harshness. Finish off the slave. Then you can embrace his wife with an easy mind.”
Ximen Qing changed his mind again. The letter he sent to the magistrate asked him to reopen the case at the end of three months, and to put Laiwang to the torture. The unfortunate man was hardly treated as a human being. The two magistrates, the prosecutor, the police, and the jailers had all accepted presents from Ximen Qing, and were severe in consequence. But among them was a scrivener who came from Xiaoyi in Shanxi, Yin Zhi by name, a man both humane and incorruptible. He realized that Ximen had manufactured this trouble so that he could take possession of Laiwang’s wife, and he declined to make out the papers that would have brought Laiwang before the magistrates. Indeed, he went so far as to tell them what he thought, so that they found it difficult to proceed as they had intended, and finally compromised by giving Laiwang forty strokes more and banishing him to Xuzhou. They accounted the alleged stolen property as seventeen taels of silver and five packets of tin and ordered Laixing to return it to his master. An official wrote the reply to the accusation, saying that Laiwang was being banished that day.
The Golden Lotus, Volume 1 Page 43
