Baoyu had only just begun to submit to regular study, and the change sat heavily on him.
When he went to see Jia Zheng after lessons, Jia Zheng asked at once whether school had already let out and whether the tutor had assigned proper work. Baoyu answered that he had: in the morning he was to arrange and review books, after meals practice calligraphy, and at noon attend lectures and recite essays. Jia Zheng approved, then added a grave warning. Baoyu was to go pay his respects to the old matriarch, learn some of the proper principles of conduct, stop thinking only of amusement, sleep early at night, and rise early for school every day. Baoyu answered yes to everything and withdrew.
He hurried through his remaining calls as though every moment delayed him from where he really wanted to be. He went to see Lady Wang, then showed himself briefly before Grandmother Jia, and after that made straight for the Bamboo Lodge.
The instant he stepped inside, he clapped his hands and laughed, "I've come back just as before!" He startled Daiyu so badly that she jumped. Zijuan lifted the curtain, and Baoyu came in and sat down.
Daiyu said, "I heard you had gone off to study. How are you back so early?"
Baoyu replied with exaggerated feeling, "You don't know what a trial it was. Since Father called me away to study, a single day apart from all of you seemed endless. I suffered through the whole day, and now that I see you again, it's like coming back to life. People say one day apart can feel like three autumns—there is truth in that after all."
Daiyu asked whether he had gone to the elders upstairs; he said he had. Had he visited anywhere else? No. She told him he ought to go and see the others too. Baoyu, sinking into comfort, said he did not want to stir anymore and only wished to sit beside her and talk a while. Since his father had already ordered him to sleep early and rise early, he would visit the others the next day.
Daiyu smiled faintly and told Zijuan to brew him some of her Dragon Well tea. "Second Master studies now," she said lightly. "He can't be treated quite as before."
That remark immediately provoked him. He launched into a bitter complaint about study and especially the formal essay tradition. He said he hated all that moralizing talk, and found the eight-legged essay most ridiculous of all: if people used it merely to secure rank and livelihood, that was one thing, but to claim it gave voice to the sages was laughable. The better sort only pieced together bits from the classics; the worse had nothing in their bellies at all and merely dragged in strange, bloated, pretentious nonsense while imagining themselves profound. How could any of that be an illumination of the sages' teaching? Yet now his father insisted on it daily, and he dared not disobey.
Daiyu did not agree so completely. Though girls had no need of such learning, she reminded him that when she had read with the same early tutor in childhood she had seen pieces that were near to human feeling and reason, and others with a delicacy and distance of tone that she had liked even without fully understanding them. It was unfair, she said, to dismiss everything in a lump. Besides, if he wished to pursue honors, this path at least belonged to the refined and reputable world.
Her words struck Baoyu oddly. Daiyu was not usually one to speak in favor of ambition, and he disliked hearing anything that sounded like respect for advancement. But he would not openly argue with her; he only gave a faint snort through his nose.
Their talk was interrupted by voices outside: Qiuwen had come at Xiren's bidding to fetch him back from the old lady's side, and Zijuan urged that he might as well drink his tea first. When the two maids entered, Baoyu joked with Qiuwen that he had been just about to come and had put her to needless trouble. Zijuan, teasing him, said he should quickly finish his tea and go, since people had been waiting for him all day. Qiuwen spat out a mock rebuke at her shameless tongue, and everyone laughed. Baoyu rose to leave. Daiyu walked him to the doorway, with Zijuan standing below the steps, and only after he had gone did she return inside.
The burden of study
Back at the House of Happy Red, Baoyu found Xiren waiting. She asked whether he had returned, and Qiuwen answered that he had been back a while already and had gone first to see Miss Lin. Baoyu asked if anything had happened.
Xiren said there had been no incident, but that Lady Wang had sent Yuanyang with a stern instruction: now that the master had set his mind on forcing Baoyu to study, if any maids dared tease and idle with him again, they would be dealt with as Qingwen and Siqi had been. Xiren was deeply hurt. After serving him so long, to earn such warnings and suspicion was a miserable reward.
Baoyu hurried to comfort her. If she would only stop worrying, he said, he would honestly apply himself to his books, and then Lady Wang would have no reason to scold any of them. He had to study that very evening, since the tutor would call on him to explain a text the next day. If he needed anything, Musk and Qiuwen were there; Xiren should rest.
Xiren answered that if he truly meant to study, then serving him in that was something they could be glad of.
After supper, Baoyu had the lamp lit and brought out the Four Books he had already read. Yet once the books lay before him, he scarcely knew where to begin. Turning the pages, each section seemed on the surface intelligible enough; but the moment he tried to probe further, he found he did not really understand it. He compared the text with the marginal notes and commentaries, struggling until the night watch had passed. At last he thought to himself that poetry had always come naturally to him, but this sort of learning left him entirely at a loss.
He sat blankly, staring. Xiren told him to rest, reminding him that effort did not all have to be made in a single hour. He answered vaguely without really hearing her. Eventually Xiren and Musk helped him to bed and then lay down themselves. But after one sleep had passed, Xiren could still hear him turning over restlessly on the kang.
"Are you still awake?" she asked. "Don't let your thoughts run wild. Rest your mind and be ready to study tomorrow."
Baoyu said that was exactly what he wished, but he could not sleep. He asked her to uncover him a little. Xiren objected that the weather was not warm. He insisted his heart felt unbearably hot and irritable and pushed the bedding down himself. She climbed up quickly to stop him, touched his forehead, and found that he was faintly feverish.
She told him so. Baoyu admitted it, but said it was only from vexation. He begged her not to alarm the household. If his father learned he was ill, he would certainly say Baoyu was pretending sickness to evade school—otherwise how could he have fallen sick at such an exactly convenient moment? By morning, he said, he would be better and go straight to lessons, and that would settle everything.
Xiren pitied him. She lay beside him and rubbed his back for a while, and before long they both drifted to sleep.
By the time Baoyu rose, the sun was already high. He cried out that it was too late, hurried through washing and morning greetings, and rushed off to school.
The tutor, Jia Dairu, was waiting with a changed face. No wonder, he said, Jia Zheng had called the boy hopeless—on the very second day he was already slacking. What sort of hour was this to arrive? Baoyu explained about the fever the night before, and the old scholar let the matter pass and resumed lessons as usual.
That evening Dairu called Baoyu up and told him to explain a passage. It was the chapter beginning "The younger generation is to be feared." Baoyu was relieved to see it was not from the Great Learning or the Doctrine of the Mean. When he asked how to explain it, Dairu told him to unfold the main sense sentence by sentence.
Baoyu first read the passage aloud, then began: the sage, he said, was encouraging the young, urging them to strive in time and not end up—here he stopped, looked up at Dairu, and hesitated.
Dairu understood at once and smiled. There was no taboo in expounding a text, he said; the classics themselves teach that one does not avoid words when quoting a written passage. So what was it they were not to end up becoming?
Baoyu finished: they were not to become old without accomplishment. The words "to be feared," he said, stirred the spirit of youth, while the words "not to be feared" warned them about what they might become later. Dairu said that was passable and asked for a fuller connected explanation.
Baoyu answered in his own way: when a person is young, his mind and abilities are often bright and capable, and that truly makes him formidable. But who can know whether his later days will not resemble Baoyu's own present one? If he drifts along until forty, then fifty, and still has not achieved anything, then even if he once looked promising in youth, by that point no one will think much of him anymore.
Dairu laughed. The main explanation had been clear enough, but the wording was childish. The phrase "without renown," he corrected, did not simply mean failing to rise to office. "Renown" referred to truly understanding principle and the Way; even a man who never became an official might still possess that. Many ancient worthies withdrew from the world and were not recognized—could they therefore be called men of no renown? And "not to be feared" did not use fear in the ordinary sense. It meant that one could now predict what such a man would amount to, which corresponded precisely to the "how can one know" earlier in the sentence. Only by seeing the relation between those words could one enter into the text finely. Did Baoyu understand now?
Baoyu said that he did.
Dairu then turned to another passage: "I have never seen one who loves virtue as he loves beauty." This one struck Baoyu more painfully, and with an awkward smile he said there seemed little to say about it. Dairu rebuked him sharply—if such a line appeared as an examination topic, would he claim there was nothing to write?
Forced on, Baoyu explained that the sage lamented how people would not love virtue, yet the moment they saw beauty they loved it beyond measure. Virtue was something native to human nature, yet people refused to cherish it. Beauty too arose from what people were born with, and naturally none failed to love it. But virtue belonged to heavenly principle, while beauty belonged to human desire; people were unwilling to love heavenly principle with the same force they gave to desire. Confucius' words were both a sigh and a hope that men might turn back. They also showed that although people might indeed love virtue, they usually loved it only shallowly; only if they loved it as intensely as beauty could that love be called real.
Dairu said that explanation, too, would do. But then he asked the question that mattered more: if Baoyu understood the sage's words, why was he himself guilty of exactly those two faults? Though Dairu was not in the household and Jia Zheng had not told him anything, he said, he knew Baoyu's failings perfectly well. How could a man not desire progress? At Baoyu's present age, he was exactly in the stage called "to be feared"; whether he ended in obscurity and became "not to be feared" was entirely in his own hands. Therefore Dairu set him a strict limit: within one month he was to sort out all the old texts he had already read; after another month he was to read essays; then Dairu would begin assigning topics and require him to compose. Any laziness would not be tolerated. The old saying ran: Those who are made into accomplished men do not get their ease; those who seek ease do not become accomplished men. Baoyu must remember that well.
Baoyu agreed, and from then on had no choice but to follow the assigned routine day after day.
Quiet at the House of Happy Red, unease in Xiren's heart
Once Baoyu had begun attending school regularly, the House of Happy Red felt unusually quiet and empty. Xiren now had leisure to do needlework, and she took up a betel-nut pouch she meant to embroider. She reflected that with Baoyu occupied by lessons, the maids at least would no longer be accused of keeping him in idleness. If only things had become like this earlier, how might Qingwen have been spared such a bitter end? The thought of one servant's fate leading to another's grief moved her to tears.
Then her mind went further still. She had never imagined herself as Baoyu's rightful wife; at most she might someday become a secondary woman in his household. Baoyu's own nature she thought manageable enough, but what if the principal wife turned out sharp and domineering? Then she herself might become another You Erjie or another Xiangling.
Judging by Grandmother Jia, Lady Wang, and hints dropped from time to time by Wang Xifeng, she could hardly doubt who that future wife was expected to be: Daiyu. And Daiyu was a girl of delicate feelings and suspicious thought. At that point Xiren's face grew hot, and she pricked herself with the needle without knowing it. Putting her work aside, she decided to go visit Daiyu and probe her temper a little.
A visit to Daiyu, and reckless talk from a servant
Daiyu was reading when Xiren arrived. She half rose and invited her to sit. Xiren stepped forward quickly and first inquired after her health. Daiyu answered that she was not really well, only a little stronger than before, and asked what Xiren had been doing at home.
Xiren said that now Baoyu had gone to school, there was almost nothing to do in his rooms, so she had come to see Daiyu and talk for a while. Zijuan brought tea. Xiren stood and told her to remain seated. Then, smiling, she said she had heard from Qiuwen that Daiyu's maid had been saying something about them behind their backs.
Zijuan laughed it off and said one should never trust Qiuwen's tongue. What she had really said was only that with Baoyu now in school, Baochai keeping away, and even Xiangling no longer coming by, things naturally felt dull.
Xiren seized on Xiangling's name at once and sighed over her hard lot. Having collided with that formidable mistress, how could she have an easy life? Stretching out two fingers for emphasis, she said the woman in question was even more severe than that, not caring in the least for outward reputation. Daiyu then recalled how bitterly that household had gone: Xiangling had suffered enough, and had not Second Sister You died of it? Xiren agreed. Since they were all women after all, only differing in title and standing, why must one be so cruel? The name carried outside the house was ugly as well.
Daiyu, who was not used to hearing Xiren speak ill of others in private, sensed that the speech had some purpose. She answered with a line that was both detached and sharp: in household matters it was always one wind pressing down the other—either east over west, or west over east. Xiren replied that a person on the side lines was timid from the start; how would she dare bully anyone else?
At that very moment an old serving woman appeared in the courtyard asking whether this was Miss Lin's room and whether a certain young lady was here. Xueyan went out and vaguely recognized her as someone from Aunt Xue's side. The woman explained that her young mistress had sent something for Miss Lin.
Daiyu had her brought in. The old woman made her bows, but instead of immediately presenting the gift, she stared at Daiyu in a frank, almost rude way until Daiyu herself felt embarrassed and had to ask what Baochai had sent.
Only then did the woman smile and answer that it was a bottle of preserved lychees. Catching sight of Xiren, she asked whether this was not the flower-like maid from Baoyu's rooms. Xiren laughed and asked how she knew her. The woman said they servants in Aunt Xue's apartments spent most of their time indoors and did not often go out with the ladies, so the young ladies might not recognize them, but the servants remembered faces when those ladies happened to visit.
She handed the jar to Xueyan, looked back at Daiyu again, and then with shocking forwardness said to Xiren that no wonder her mistress had always said Miss Lin and Baoyu made a pair—she was like a heavenly immortal.
Xiren, seeing at once how improper this was, hurriedly diverted the conversation and invited the woman to sit and drink tea. But the old servant only said they were all too busy over the affairs of another young lady; besides, there were still two more bottles of lychees to be sent to Baoyu. Shaking as she went, she took her leave.
Daiyu was annoyed by the woman's impertinence, but since she had come from Baochai she could not rebuke her. Only after the woman had passed the door did she call after her to tell Baochai she was grateful for the trouble. Even then the servant kept muttering as she went that with such looks, no one but Baoyu could be fit to match her. Daiyu pretended not to hear.
When she was gone, Xiren remarked with a laugh that people in old age often talked such nonsense that one could not decide whether to be angry or amused. Xueyan brought the jar over for Daiyu to look at, but Daiyu said she had no desire to eat any and told her to put it away. After another little while of conversation, Xiren left.
Twilight thoughts and the shape of anxiety
At evening, as Daiyu was about to remove her makeup and settle for the night, she happened to glance up and see the lychee jar again. At once the old woman's words from earlier in the day returned to pierce her heart.
In the stillness of dusk, with no one about, a thousand griefs rose together. She thought of her own frail body and of the fact that she was no longer a child. Baoyu, she believed, had no one else in his heart; yet from Grandmother Jia and Lady Wang she had seen no clear sign of intention. Bitterly she regretted that while her parents had lived, they had not arranged the match early. Then another thought came: had they lived, they might have promised her elsewhere; and how could anyone elsewhere have had Baoyu's nature, gifts, and heart? In that case, would there even have remained the slender hope she possessed now?
So her mind turned up and down like a well-wheel, endlessly circling. She sighed, shed a few tears, and without spirit or purpose threw herself down on the bed still in her clothes.
The nightmare
Half asleep, half entranced, she seemed to see a little maid come in and announce that Mr. Jia Yucun was outside asking to see her. Daiyu answered in the dream as she would awake: she had studied under him once, but she was not one of his male pupils, and besides, since he had dealings with her uncle and had never once mentioned her before, it would not be proper to meet him now. She told the maid to say that she was ill and could not come out, and to thank him for his concern.
But the maid answered that perhaps he had come to congratulate her: people had arrived from Nanjing to fetch her home.
Then, as dreams collapse space and order, Wang Xifeng suddenly appeared with Lady Xing, Lady Wang, Baochai, and others, all smiling. They had come, they said, first to congratulate her and second to send her off.
Daiyu panicked and demanded to know what they meant. Xifeng, in that bright merciless tone of hers, said Daiyu should stop pretending ignorance. Did she not know? Her father had been promoted in Hubei as grain circuit intendant, had taken a second wife with whom he was very well pleased, and now, thinking it improper that Daiyu should remain where she was, had asked Jia Yucun to arrange her marriage to some relative of that stepmother's family. Since it would be a remarriage on the man's side, arrangements had already been made to fetch her south. Once she reached home, she would likely be sent over at once. Everything, Xifeng said, was being decided by that stepmother. They even feared there might be no one to look after her on the road and had thought of sending her cousin Lian to escort her.
A cold sweat broke over Daiyu. Within the dream she half believed her father really was still alive and serving in office there. Urgently she denied it and insisted Xifeng was making it all up. Lady Xing gave Lady Wang a look and said there was no use if Daiyu still refused to believe; they might as well go. Through tears Daiyu asked her two aunts to stay, but they all only smiled coldly and left.
Her heart now raced with silent terror. Words stuck in her throat. Suddenly she seemed to find herself before Grandmother Jia and thought that only the old lady could save her. She fell to her knees, clasped Grandmother Jia by the waist, and begged: save me; I would rather die than go south; with a stepmother there, and not my own mother, how could I return? I would far rather remain with you.
But Grandmother Jia sat with a blank face and smiled. "This is none of my affair," she said.
Daiyu cried out in disbelief. Grandmother Jia went on coldly that a remarriage might be all for the better—it would mean one more bridal trousseau besides. Daiyu wept and said that if she were allowed to stay with the old lady, she would never waste any extra family money, she only begged for protection. Grandmother Jia answered that it was no use. A woman had to marry in the end; a child like Daiyu did not understand that remaining here forever could not be a solution.
Daiyu said she would rather stay and live as a servant, doing her own work and feeding herself, if only the old lady would decide in her favor. But Grandmother Jia would not speak. Daiyu clung to her and sobbed that Grandmother Jia had always been kindest to her, had always loved her most—how could she now refuse her at the crucial moment? Even if Daiyu was only a daughter's child, one remove further out, her mother had been Grandmother Jia's own flesh and blood. For her dead mother's sake, should she not be protected?
As Daiyu cried into her bosom, she heard Grandmother Jia call for Yuanyang to take the girl away and let her rest, saying she was exhausted by all this fuss.
Then Daiyu knew there was no path left. Begging was useless. Better to die.
She stood and rushed outside. Deep anguish seized her at having no mother of her own. Even the grandmother, aunts, and cousins who had seemed to treat her so well—now she saw it was all false. At the next instant she thought: why has Baoyu alone not appeared? If only I could see him once, perhaps he would still have some way to help.
And there he was before her, smiling, saying, "Little cousin, great joy to you!"
That single phrase threw her into even greater desperation. Forgetting all restraint, she seized him tightly and cried, "Now I know at last that you are heartless and faithless!"
Baoyu answered, "How am I heartless? Since you have a family arranged for you, each of us must go his own way."
The more she heard, the more frantic she became, until she could only clutch him and weep: "Good brother, who are you sending me to go with?"
Then the dream shifted again. Baoyu said that if she did not want to go, she should stay here. She had originally been promised to him, and that was why she had come into their house. Had she not thought about how he had always treated her?
At once Daiyu half believed this too, as if it had really long been settled. Her grief suddenly turned to joy. She asked him, with life and death hanging on the question, whether he truly meant her to stay or go.
Baoyu answered that he told her to remain. If she did not believe his words, she should look directly at his heart.
With that he produced a small knife and slashed his chest. Blood streamed out.
Daiyu, terrified out of her senses, threw her hand over his heart and cried, "How could you do such a thing? Better kill me first!"
Baoyu said not to be afraid—he would show her his heart. He even reached into the wound as if to draw it forth. Daiyu trembled, sobbed, and in terror that someone might see, clung to him and wept bitterly. Then Baoyu said he was finished: his heart was gone and he could no longer live. Rolling his eyes upward, he fell with a heavy thud.
Daiyu let out a wild cry.
At that very moment she heard Zijuan calling, "Miss, Miss, what is it? Are you caught in a nightmare? Wake up—take off your clothes and sleep properly."
She turned over. It had all been a dreadful dream.
Waking into illness
Yet even awake, her throat still felt choked with sobbing, and her heart pounded in confusion. The pillow was soaked with tears. Her shoulders, back, and whole body felt icy cold.
She thought it over for a while. Her father had long been dead; nothing between her and Baoyu had ever been formally fixed. How could such scenes have arisen? Then another thought struck her: in the dream she had been utterly without support. If Baoyu truly were to die, what then would become of her? As the first shock passed and she reflected on it, pain only deepened, and her spirit grew more disordered still.
After another fit of weeping, a little sweat finally rose over her body. She struggled up, took off her outer robe, had Zijuan cover her properly, and lay back down. But how could she sleep? Outside there was a rustling sound, perhaps wind, perhaps rain. After a while there came a distant breathing noise—only Zijuan sleeping nearby, the rise and fall of her breath. Daiyu forced herself up again and sat for a while wrapped in the quilt. A thread of cool air slipped in through the window crack and made her skin bristle. She lay down once more. Just as drowsiness approached, the bamboo outside filled with the chirping of sparrows, one after another without end, and pale dawn gradually filtered through the papered windows.
Now fully awake, her eyes bright and fevered, she began coughing. The sound roused Zijuan too.
Zijuan asked whether she had not slept at all and said the renewed coughing must mean she had caught a chill. The window paper was already whitening; it would soon be broad daylight. She urged Daiyu to rest and nourish her spirit and not think herself into exhaustion. Daiyu answered that she wanted nothing more than sleep but simply could not get it. Zijuan should sleep if she could.
Daiyu coughed again. Hearing her in that state, Zijuan's heart hurt as well, and she could not lie still. When the coughing continued, she rose at once and held the spittoon for her. By then it was already light.
Daiyu asked if she was not going back to sleep. Zijuan smiled faintly and said there was no point sleeping now that day had come. Daiyu told her in that case to change the spittoon.
Zijuan carried it out, set it on the table, and went through the motions of changing it quietly. But when she opened it to empty it, she saw that it was full of phlegm streaked with many stars of blood. She was so shocked that she cried out involuntarily, "Oh no—this is terrible!"
From inside, Daiyu immediately called to ask what was wrong. Realizing her mistake, Zijuan quickly changed her words and said only that her hand had slipped and she had nearly dropped the vessel. Daiyu asked whether there was something in the sputum. Zijuan said no. Yet while saying it, sorrow rushed up in her throat; tears spilled down her face, and her voice had already changed.
Because there was a sweet, metallic taste in her own throat, Daiyu had already suspected something. She had also heard Zijuan's startled exclamation outside, and now the maid's forced answer, thick with grief, confirmed nearly all of it for her. She called Zijuan back in and told her not to stand outside catching the chill.
That single answer of "yes" from Zijuan sounded even more mournful than before, and Daiyu's heart turned half cold. When Zijuan entered wiping her eyes with a handkerchief, Daiyu asked why she was crying so early in the morning. Zijuan forced a smile and said she was not crying at all; she had only gotten something in her eyes after rising. She added that Daiyu must have been awake more than usual in the night, since she had heard her coughing for so long.
Daiyu admitted it: the more she wanted to sleep, the less she could. Zijuan then gently urged her to try to release some of what lay on her mind. One's body was the root of everything, she said. As the saying goes, if the green hills remain, there will still be firewood to burn. Besides, from Grandmother Jia and Lady Wang downward, everyone in the house cared for her.
It was exactly that sentence that pulled the nightmare back into Daiyu's mind. Something struck against her heart; darkness swam before her eyes; her whole expression changed. Zijuan hurried forward with the spittoon while Xueyan rubbed her back. Only after some time did Daiyu spit out a mouthful of phlegm. In it was a thin thread of dark blood, quivering and bright. The faces of both maids went pale with fright.
They stayed beside her while she sank back in a stupor. Seeing the danger, Zijuan signaled Xueyan with her lips to go call someone at once.
News spreads through the garden
Xueyan had only just stepped outside when Cuilv and Cuimo came by smiling. They said their mistresses were all with Fourth Girl discussing the garden painting she had made, and asked why Miss Lin had still not come out. Xueyan motioned them sharply to be quiet, which alarmed them at once. When they asked what had happened, she told them everything—the coughing in the night, the blood in the sputum, the weakness.
Both girls clicked their tongues and said this was no trifling matter. Why had no one informed Grandmother Jia yet? How could the attendants be so muddled? Xueyan said she was just on her way when they arrived.
At that moment Zijuan called from inside asking who was talking outside; the young lady wanted to know. The three girls hurried in together. Seeing Daiyu lying under the covers, Cuilv and Cuimo tried to speak lightly. Daiyu asked who had told them and why they were making such a fuss. Cuimo answered that their young ladies, with Xiangyun, had been at Fourth Girl's rooms discussing the painting of the Prospect Garden and had sent them to invite her, not knowing she was again unwell.
Daiyu said it was nothing serious, only that her body felt unusually weak, and that after lying down a little she would get up. She asked them to go back and tell Third Girl and Xiangyun that if they had nothing to do after breakfast, they might come sit with her there instead. Then she asked whether Baoyu had come by their place. They said he had not. Cuimo added that in the last two days he had been in school, and with the master inspecting his lessons daily, how could he run about as he used to?
Daiyu heard that and said nothing.
The two maids lingered a moment and then quietly withdrew.
Meanwhile Tanchun and Xiangyun were indeed at Xichun's place, discussing the painting of the Grand View Garden—this part too empty, that part too crowded, here too sparse, there too dense—and they were even thinking of matching poems to it. They had sent for Daiyu to consult with them. Then Cuilv and Cuimo returned in obvious agitation. Xiangyun asked at once why Daiyu had not come. Cuilv replied that Miss Lin's illness had flared again during the night and that she had coughed without cease. Xueyan had said she had filled a whole spittoon with bloody phlegm.
Tanchun was startled and asked whether this could be true. The maids insisted that it was. Cuimo said they had just seen her with their own eyes: she had no color in her face, and even her speech had grown weak. Xiangyun exclaimed that if she was so bad, how could she still be speaking? Tanchun, vexed at such thoughtless bluntness, began to say that being unable to speak would mean she was already—then stopped herself and swallowed the rest.
Xichun observed in her cool way that Daiyu was too intelligent not to see through things, yet in another way she never quite saw through anything at all, taking every little matter to heart. How many things in this world were wholly real?
Tanchun said that in any case they should all go and see her. If the illness was grave, they could report it through the proper channels and have a physician sent in without delay. Xiangyun agreed. Xichun said they should go first and she would follow later.
So Tanchun and Xiangyun, each attended by a little maid, went together to the Bamboo Lodge.
Friends at the bedside
When they entered, Daiyu, seeing the two of them, could not help feeling another wave of sorrow. Her mind turned again to the dream: if even Grandmother Jia had abandoned her there, what could these girls do? And besides, if she had not invited them, would they have come at all? Even so, she could not show such thoughts on her face. She had Zijuan help her up and invited them to sit.
Tanchun and Xiangyun both sat on the edge of the bed, one on each side. Looking at Daiyu in that condition, they too felt sorrow. Tanchun gently asked why she was uncomfortable again. Daiyu answered that there was nothing especially serious, only that her whole body felt weak.
Behind Daiyu's back, Zijuan secretly pointed toward the spittoon. Xiangyun, still young and direct by nature, reached out at once and took it up to look. The moment she saw it she was shocked and cried out, "Was this coughed up by you, sister? This is serious indeed!"
Earlier Daiyu had been half dazed and had not looked closely at what she had brought up. Now, hearing Xiangyun's alarm and turning her head to see for herself, even her own face seemed to turn ashen.
Tanchun instantly tried to smooth the moment over, blaming only an upsurge of lung heat and saying that bringing up a little blood with it was not unheard of. It was just Xiangyun, she said, who made a great stinging commotion over everything. Xiangyun reddened and regretted her impulsive speech.
Seeing that Daiyu's spirits were faint and she looked tired and troubled, Tanchun quickly rose and said they should let her rest and recover her mind quietly; they would come again later. Daiyu thanked them for their concern. Tanchun then told Zijuan to take the greatest care in attending on her mistress, and Zijuan agreed.
Just as Tanchun was about to leave, someone outside suddenly raised a loud voice.
The scene broke off there, with the room still full of unease.