by Cao Xueqin
“Don’t go out like that,” warned Baoyu. “It’ll be no joke if you catch cold.”
Qingwen motioned to him to keep quiet and slipped out of the door. Once outside the room, however, a breath of wind chilled her to the bone and set her shivering.
“No wonder they say you shouldn’t expose yourself to the wind when you’re warm,” she thought. “This cold really cuts like a knife.”
Just then, before she had time to frighten Sheyue, Baoyu called loudly from inside, “Qingwen’s gone out!”
She turned back and went in again at once.
“Did you think I was going to scare her to death?” She giggled. “What a fuss-pot you are—a regular old woman!”
“That wasn’t what worried me,” Baoyu explained. “For one thing, I didn’t want you to catch cold. For another, if she’d been caught by surprise and screamed that might have woken the others; and instead of seeing the joke they’d accuse us of getting up to mischief as soon as Xiren was away. Now, come and tuck in my bedding for me, will you?”
Qingwen did so, putting her hands inside his quilt to warm them.
“Your hands are icy!” he exclaimed. “I warned you you’d catch cold.”
He noticed that her cheeks were as red as rouge, and feeling them found them as cold as ice as well.
“Hop inside my quilt, quick, and warm up!” he urged.
That same instant the door was flung open. Sheyue burst breathlessly in.
“Goodness me! I’ve had such a fright,” she cried laughing. “I thought I saw someone crouching in the dark, behind the rocks. I was just going to scream when I realized it was only that big pheasant it flapped out into the light at the sight of me, and then I saw it clearly. If I’d screamed, it would have woken all the others.” Washing her hands then she remarked, “So Qingwen’s gone out, has she? How come I didn’t see her? She must have been meaning to scare me.”
“Here she is,” chuckled Baoyu. “Thawing out under my quilt. If I hadn’t called out quickly, she’d have given you a fine fright.”
“She didn’t need me for that. The wretch took fright herself,” retorted Qingwen, returning to her own bed.
“Surely you didn’t slip out like that, in that tight-fitting horse-thief’s out fit?” asked Sheyue.
“Oh yes, she did,” said Baoyu.
“You deserve to catch your death!” exclaimed Sheyue. “What a day to choose! Why, just standing outside for a minute would chap your skin.”
She took the copper guard off the brazier to shovel some ash over the glowing charcoal, then put in two slabs of incense before replacing the guard. After that stepping behind the screen, she trimmed the lamp and lay down to sleep again.
Qingwen, warm now after being chilled, gave a couple of sneezes.
“What did I tell you?” Baoyu sighed. “Now you’ve caught cold.”
“She complained of not feeling well this morning,” Sheyue told him. “And she hasn’t eaten anything all day. Yet instead of taking proper care of herself she tries to scare me. If she’s ill tomorrow it will serve her right.”
“Do you have a fever?” asked Baoyu.
“It’s nothing.” Qingwen coughed. “I’m not all that delicate.”
Just then the clock on the shelf in the outer room struck two. The old nanny on night duty outside coughed warningly.
“Go to sleep now, young ladies,” she said. “There’ll be plenty of time for chattering tomorrow.”
“We’d better stop talking before they start to nag,” whispered Baoyu.
And so he three of them settled down to sleep.
The next morning, sure enough, Qingwen woke feeling listless. Her nose was stopped up and her voice was hoarse.
“Let’s say nothing about this,” suggested Baoyu. “If the mistress heard, she’d want you to go home and rest; and though you might enjoy being back with your people, it would be colder there. Better stay here. Just lie down in the inner room. I’ll have a doctor fetched through the back gate and he can take a look at you on the quiet.”
“That’s all very well,” said Qingwen. “But at least let Madam Zhu know. Otherwise, how will you explain it when people ask what the doctor’s doing here?”
Baoyu saw sense in this and called in one of the old nannies.
“Go and tell Madam Zhu that Qingwen has a slight cold, nothing serious,” he said. “But if she goes home to rest I’ll have nobody here, as Xiren’s away just now. Ask her to send for a doctor and have him come here quietly through the back gate. There’s no need to tell the mistress.”
The nanny returned in due course to announce, “I’ve told Madam Zhu. She says if a couple of these will cure her, all right; otherwise she should be sent home. The weather now is treacherous. Infecting other people doesn’t matter much, but we mustn’t let the young ladies in the Garden catch anything.”
Qingwen heard this as she lay coughing in the alcove.
“She talks as if I had the plague!” she cried crossly. “Whom am I going to infect? All right, I’ll leave this place. But after this none of you must ever complain, as long as you live, of so much as a headache!”
She started getting up.
“Don’t be angry,” begged Baoyu, making her lie down again. “She’s only doing her job, afraid the mistress may scold if she hears about this. She doesn’t mean it seriously. You lose your temper far too easily, and of course being ill today makes you extra fractious.”
Just then the doctor was announced. Baoyu hid hurriedly behind a bookcase while a few matrons from the back gate ushered him in. The young maids had withdrawn, leaving three or four older women to let down the embroidered red curtains in front of the alcove, and Qingwen put her hand out through the curtains. The doctor hastily averted his eyes at the sight of two nails a good two to three inches long, stained crimson with balsam; and at once an old nanny covered the hand with a handkerchief. After feeling the patient’s pulse for a while, the doctor rose and withdrew to the outer room.
“The young lady is suffering from a cold aggravated by indigestion,” he told the nannies. “The weather has been trying recently, and this is a mild attack of influenza. Luckily she is a young lady who normally eats and drinks with moderation, and the trouble isn’t serious; but as she is rather delicate she has succumbed to a slight infection. A couple of doses of medicine will set her right.” He then followed the matrons out again.
Since Li Wan had sent to order the attendants at the back gate and the maids in the various apartments to keep out of sight, the doctor could only feast his eyes on the Garden not a single young woman did he see on his way out. Upon reaching the back gate, he sat down in the gatehouse used by the pages on duty to make out his prescription.
The old nannies asked him not to leave at once.
“Our young master is most particular,” one of them explained. “He may want to ask you some questions.”
“Young master!” exclaimed the doctor. “Wasn’t that a young lady I examined just now? Surely it was a young lady’s boudoir. And the curtains were let down too, so how can it have been a young gentleman?”
“Why, sir,” chuckled the nanny, lowering her voice, “I see now why the boy told me they’d invited a new doctor. You don’t know our family. That was our young master’s room, and your patient was one of his maids, one of the more senior ones, true, but no young ‘lady.’ You wouldn’t have gained admission so easily to one of our young ladies’ boudoirs.”
With that she took the prescription back to the Garden.
Baoyu examined it and found it listed such herbs as perilla, platycodon, siler and nepeta, as well as citrus trifoliata and ephedra.
“Confound the fellow!” he swore. “He’s prescribing for her just as he would for a man. How could she stand such strong medicine? Even if she had bad indigestion how could she take citrus trifoliata and ephedra! Who sent for this fellow? Get rid of him, quick, and fetch some doctor we know.”
“How were we to know what his prescriptions would be l
ike?” retorted the nanny. “We can easily send for Doctor Wang, but we’ll have to pay for the hire of this other man’s sedan-chair, as we didn’t send for him through the chief steward.”
“How much will it be?”
“It wouldn’t look well to give too little,” she answered. “A family like ours, in such a case, should pay at least a tael.”
“How much do we usually pay Doctor Wang?”
“Doctor Wang and Doctor Zhang, who come so often, aren’t paid for each separate visit. Our rule is to give them a lump sum at the chief festivals every year. Since this new man’s only coming this once, we should give him one tael.”
Baoyu then ordered Sheyue to fetch some silver.
“I don’t know where our Mistress Xiren keeps it,” she answered laughingly.
“I often see her getting money from that small inlaid cabinet,” he told her. “I’ll help you find it.”
They went together into the storeroom and opened the cabinet. The top compartment was full of brushes and sticks of ink, fans, incense slabs, multi-coloured pouches, sashes and the like. On the lower shelf lay a few strings of cash. But upon opening one of the drawers, they discovered a small wicker basket containing some silver ingots, as well as a balance for weighing them with.
Sheyue picked up the balance and one ingot of silver.
“Which is the one-tael mark?” she asked Baoyu.
“Are you asking me?” he chuckled. “You should know better.”
She smiled too and started out to consult someone else.
“Just pick one of the biggest pieces,” urged Baoyu. “We’re not shopkeepers—why be so finicky?”
Setting down the balance, Sheyue picked up another ingot which she weighed in her hand.
“This is probably about one tael,” she remarked. “We’d better be on the generous side, so as not to have that poor devil laughing at us. It would never occur to him that we don’t know how to use a balance. Instead, he’d call us misers.”
The woman standing on the steps outside the door put in, “That’s half a five-tael bar, it must weigh at least two taels. As you’ve nothing here to cut it with, you’d better put it away, miss, and pick something smaller.”
By now, however, Sheyue had closed the cabinet.
“I can’t be bothered,” she laughed. “If it’s too much, you can pocket the difference yourself.”
“Just go and fetch Doctor Wang here fast,” ordered Baoyu.
The woman took the silver and went to do as she was told.
Before very long Mingyan brought Doctor Wang, who first examined the patient then made a diagnosis very similar to the previous one. But instead of such ingredients as citrus trifoliata and ephedra, his prescription called for angelica, orange peel and white peony; moreover the dosage was smaller.
“This is more like medicine for girls,” observed Baoyu approvingly. “Although we want to drive out the cold, drastic methods are no good. Last year when I had a chill and a bilious attack, and Doctor Wang examined me, he said I couldn’t take strong drugs like ephedra, gypsum and citrus trifoliata. When I compare myself with you girls, I’m like a big poplar scores of years old in the graveyard, while you’re like that white begonia in bud which Jia Yun gave me last autumn—how can you take medicines too potent even for me?”
“Are poplars the only graveyard trees?” Sheyue countered. “What about pines and cedars? Personally, I can’t stand poplars. They have so few leaves for their size, and they keep up that maddening rustling even when there’s not a breath of wind. How low-class to compare yourself to such a tree!”
“I wouldn’t venture to compare myself with the pine or cedar,” chuckled Baoyu. “Even Confucius said, ‘When winter comes, we realize that the pine and cedar are evergreen.’ You see, they’re so magnificent, only really thick-skinned people would compare themselves with them.”
As they were chatting, a serving-woman brought in the drugs. Baoyu ordered them to fetch the silver medicine-pot and brew the decoction over the brazier.
“Why not let the kitchen do it?” asked Qingwen. “You don’t want the whole place reeking of medicine, do you?”
“The smell of medicine is sweeter than any flower or fruit,” asserted Baoyu. “What could be finer than these herbs which immortals, as well as hermits and recluses, pick to decoct as medicine? I was thinking only just now that we lack nothing here except the fragrance of herbs; but now it will be perfect.”
With that he had the medicine brewed. He also made Sheyue prepare some things to send by an old nanny to Xiren, with a message begging her not to grieve too much. After having seen to all this, he went to pay his respects to his grandmother and mother and to have his meal.
Just then Xifeng was saying to the Lady Dowager and Lady Wang, “Now that it’s so cold and the days are shorter, wouldn’t it be better for the girls to have their meals with my elder sister-in-law in the Garden? They can come here to eat again once it is warmer.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Lady Wang. “Especially if there’s a high wind or snow. Exposure to cold after eating isn’t good; neither is breathing cold air on an empty stomach. Some maids are always on duty in those five large rooms inside the back gate of the Garden, and we can send two women from our kitchen there to cook for the girls. They can get their share of fresh vegetables and any money or things they need from the chief steward’s office. And when we have game like pheasant or roebuck, we can send them a share.”
“The idea did occur to me too,” said the Lady Dowager. “But I was afraid it would mean more work, setting up another kitchen.”
“It won’t,” Xifeng assured her. “They’ll get their usual share. More in one place means less in another. And even if it causes a little more trouble, it will prevent the girls from being exposed to the cold. The others might stand it all right, but not Daiyu, or even Cousin Bao for that matter. In fact, none of the girls is really strong.”
“Quite so,” approved the Lady Dowager. “I would have proposed this myself, but saw you were all so busy, even if you didn’t complain of the extra work you might well feel that I only care about my younger grandchildren, with no consideration for those of you who run the household. I’m glad you suggested this.”
It so happened that Aunt Xue and Aunt Li had called, while Lady Xing and Madam You were still there paying their respects.
“I’m going to say something today which I’ve been keeping back for fear of giving Xifeng a swelled head or causing jealousy,” the old lady told them. “All of you have been sister-in-law yourselves, before and after your own marriages. So tell me have you ever known a sister-in-law as thoughtful as she is?”
Aunt Xue, Aunt Li and Madam You agreed.
“She’s one in a thousand!” they said. “Other young married women do no more than politeness requires, whereas she has genuine feeling for her husband’s younger relatives and is truly dutiful to you as well, madam.”
The Lady Dowager nodded.
“But fond as I am of her, I’m afraid she may be too clever for her own good,” she sighed.
“You’re wrong there, Old Ancestress,” laughed Xifeng. “It’s said that the cleverest people don’t live long. It’s all right for everyone else to say that and believe it. But you’re the last person who should subscribe to that. Our Old Ancestress is at least ten times more intelligent that I am, and since you’re enjoying both good fortune and long life, I ought to do even better. I may live to be a thousand, not dying until our Old Ancestress has ascended to the Western Paradise.”
“What fun would that be, pray?” the Lady Dowager parried. “Everybody else dead and only we two old hags left?”
The whole party burst out laughing at this retort.
What followed is related in the next chapter.
Chapter 52
Tactful Pinger Conceals the Theft of Her Gold Bracelet
Plucky Qingwen Mends a Peacock-Feather Cape in Bed
After the rest had left, Baochai and the other girls dined
with the old lady. The meal at an end, Baoyu went back first to the Garden as he had Qingwen on his mind. His rooms were filled with the pungent scent of herbs and Qingwen was lying all alone on the kang, her face flushed with fever, her forehead hot to his touch. After hastily warming his hands over the brazier, he felt her body beneath the quilt and found it burning too.
“I don’t mind the others going off,” he said, “but how could Sheyue and Qiuwen have the heart to leave you?”
“I made Qiuwen go for her meal, and just now Pinger called Sheyue out to have a word with her. Goodness knows what they’re being so secretive about—my staying here although I’m ill, I suppose.”
“Pinger’s not like that,” he assured her. “Besides, she’d no idea you were ill. She must have come to talk to Sheyue about something else and, happening to find you in bed, said she’d come to ask after you. That’s only common politeness. If any trouble comes of your staying here, it has nothing to do with her. And the two of you normally get on so well, she’d never risk spoiling your friendship over something that is no concern of hers.”
“You’re probably right,” agreed Qingwen. “But why are they suddenly hiding something from me?”
“I’ll slip out by the back door and listen outside the window, then let you know what it’s all about,” he told her with a grin.
He did in fact go out to eavesdrop and heard Sheyue ask softly, “How did you recover it?”
“When I missed it that day after washing my hands, my mistress told me not to make a fuss,” replied Pinger. “Once out of the Garden, however, she ordered the matrons in all the Garden apartments to investigate carefully. It was Miss Xiuyan’s maid whom we suspected. We thought that, being poor and never having seen such things before, the child might have picked it up. We never dreamed it would turn out to be one of your girls. Luckily Madam Lian was out when Mrs. Song brought the bracelet back to me saying she’d seen young Zhuier take it, and she’d come to report it to Madam Lian. I was very glad to get my bracelet back.
