CHAPTER LIII. Page 2 _The Dream of the Red Chamber
When Chia Chen had exhausted the list, "Bring him in!" he cried. In a little time, he perceived Wu Chin-hsiao make his appearance inside. But simply halting in the court, he bumped his head on the ground and paid his respects.
Chia Chen desired a servant to raise him up. "You're still so hale!" he smiled.
"I don't deceive you, Sir," Wu Chin-hsiao observed, "when I say that yours servants are so accustomed to walking, that had we not come, we wouldn't have felt exceedingly dull. Isn't the whole crowd of them keen upon coming to see what the world is like at the feet of the son of heaven? Yet they're, after all, so young in years, that there's the fear of their going astray on the way. But, in a few more years, I shall be able to appease my solicitude on their account."
"How many days have you been on the way?" Chia Chen inquired.
"To reply to your question, Sir," Wu Chin-hsiao ventured, "so much snow has fallen this year that it's everywhere out of town four and five feet in depth. The other day, the weather suddenly turned mild, and with the thaw that set in, it became so very hard to make any progress that we wasted several days. Yet albeit we've been a month and two days in accomplishing the journey; it isn't anything excessive. But as I feared lest you, Sir, would be giving way to anxiety, didn't I hurry along to arrive in good time?"
"How is it, I said, that he's come only to-day!" Chia Chen observed.
"But upon looking over the list just now it seemed to me that you, old fossil, had come again to make as much as fun of me, as if you were putting up a stage for a boxing-match."
Wu Chin-hsiao hastily drew near a couple of steps. "I must tell you, Sir," he remarked, "that the harvest this year hasn't really been good. Rain set in ever since the third moon, and there it went on incessantly straight up to the eighth moon. Indeed, the weather hasn't kept fine for five or six consecutive days. In the ninth moon, there came a storm of hail, each stone of which was about the size of a saucer. And over an area of the neighbouring two or three hundred li, the men and houses, animals and crops, which sustained injury, numbered over thousands and ten thousands. Hence it is that the things we've brought now are what they are. Your servant would not have the audacity to tell a lie."
Chia Chen knitted his eyebrows. "I had computed," he said, "that the very least you would have brought would have been five thousand taels. What's this enough for? There are only now eight or nine of you farmers, and from two localities reports have contrariwise reached us during the course of this very year of the occurrence of droughts; and do you people come again to try your larks with us? Why, verily these aren't sufficient to see the new year in with."
"And yet," Wu Chin-hsiao argued, "your place can be looked upon as having fared well; for my brother, who's only over a hundred li away from where I am, has actually fallen in with a vastly different lot! He has at present eight farms of that mansion under his control, and these considerably larger than those of yours, Sir; and yet this year they too have only produced but a few things. So nothing beyond two or three thousand taels has been realised. What's more, they've had to borrow money."
"Quite so!" Chia Chen exclaimed. "The state of things in my place here is passable. I've got no outside outlay. The main thing I have to mind is to make provision for a year's necessary expenses. If I launch out into luxuries, I have to suffer hardships, so I must try a little self-denial and manage to save something. It's the custom, besides, at the end of the year to send presents to people and invite others; but I'll thicken the skin of my face a bit, (and dispense with both), and have done. I'm not like the inmates in that mansion, who have, during the last few years, added so many items of expenditure, that it's, of course, a matter of impossibility for them to avoid loosening their purse strings. But they haven't, on the other hand, made any addition to their funds and landed property. During the course of the past year or two, they've had to make up many deficits. And if they don't appeal to you, to whom can they go?"
Wu Chin-hsiao laughed. "It's true," he said, "that in that mansion many items have been added, but money goes out and money comes in. And won't the Empress and His Majesty the Emperor bestow their favour?"
At these words, Chia Chen smilingly faced Chia Jung and the other inmates. "Just you listen to his arguments!" he exclaimed. "Aren't they ridiculous, eh?"
Chia Jung and the rest promptly smiled. "Among your hills and seaboard can anything," they observed, "be known with regard to this principle? Is it likely, pray, that the Empress will ever make over to us the Emperor's treasury? Why, even supposing she may at heart entertain any such wish, she herself cannot possibly adopt independent action. Of course, she does confer her benefits on them, but this is at stated times and fixed periods, and they merely consist of a few coloured satins, antiquities, and bric-a-brac. In fact, when she does bestow hard cash on them, it doesn't exceed a hundred ounces of silver. But did she even give them so much as a thousand and more taels, what would these suffice for? During which of the two last years have they not had to fork out several thousands of taels? In the first year, the imperial consort paid a visit to her parents; and just calculate how much they must have run through in laying out that park, and you'll then know how they stand! Why, if in another couple of years, the Empress comes and pays them a second visit, they'll be, I'm inclined to fancy, regular paupers."
"That's why," urged Chia Chen smiling, "country people are such unsophisticated creatures, that though they behold what lies on the surface, they have no idea of what is inside hidden from view. They're just like a piece of yellow cedar made into a mallet for beating the sonorous stones with. The exterior looks well enough; but it's all bitter inside."
"In very truth," Chia Jung added, laughing also the while, as he addressed himself to Chia Chen, "that mansion is impoverished. The other day, I heard a consultation held on the sly between aunt Secunda and Yuean Yang. What they wanted was to filch our worthy senior's things and go and pawn them in order to raise money."
"This is just another devilish trick of that minx Feng!" Chia Chen smiled. "How ever could they have reached such straits? She's certain to have seen that expenses were great, and that heavy deficits had to be squared, so wishing again to curtail some item or other, who knows which, she devised this plan as a preparatory step, in order that when it came to be generally known, people should say that they had been reduced to such poverty. But from the result of the calculations I have arrived at in my mind, things haven't as yet attained this climax:"
Continuing, he issued orders to a servant to take Wu Chin-hsiao outside, and to treat him with every consideration. But no further mention need be made of him.
During this while, Chia Chen gave directions to keep from the various perquisites just received such as would prove serviceable for the sacrifices to their ancestors, and, selecting a few things of each kind, he told Chia Jung to have them taken to the Jung mansion. After this, he himself kept what was required for his own use at home; and then allotting the rest, with due compliance to gradation, he had share after share piled up at the foot of the moon-shaped platform, and sending servants to summon the young men of the clan, he distributed them among them.
In quick succession, numerous contributions for the ancestral sacrifices were likewise sent from the Jung mansion; also presents for Chia Chen. Chia Chen inspected the things, and having them removed, he completed preparing the sacrificial utensils. Then putting on a pair of slip-shod shoes and throwing over his shoulders a long pelisse with 'She-li-sun' fur, he bade the servants spread a large wolf-skin rug in a sunny place on the stone steps below the pillars of the pavilion, and with his back to the warm sun, he leisurely watched the young people come and receive the new year gifts. Perceiving that Chia Ch'in had also come to fetch his share, Chia Chen called him over. "How is it that you've come too?" he asked. "Who told you to come?"
Chia Ch'in respectfully dropped his arms against his sides. "I heard," he replied, "that you, senior Sir, had sent for us to appear before you here and receive our presents; so I didn't wait for the servants to go and tell me, but came straightway."
"These things," Chia Chen added, "are intended for distribution among all those uncles and cousins who have nothing to do and who enjoy no source of income. Those two years you had no work, I gave you plenty of things too. But you're entrusted at present with some charge in the other mansion, and you exercise in the family temples control over the bonzes and taoist priests, so that you as well derive every month your share of an allowance. Irrespective of that, the allowances and money of the Buddhist priests pass through your hands. And do you still come to fetch things of this kind? You're far too greedy. Just you look at the fineries you wear. Why, they look like the habiliments of one who has money to spend, of a regular man of business. You said some time back that you had nothing which could bring you in any money, but how is it that you've got none again now? You really don't look as if you were in the same plight that you were in once upon a time."
"I have in my home a goodly number of inmates," Chia Ch'in explained, "so my expenses are great."
Chia Chen gave a saturnine laugh. "Are you trying again to excuse yourself with me?" he cried. "Do you flatter yourself that I have no idea of your doings in the family temples? When you get there, you, of course, play the grand personnage and no one has the courage to run counter to your wishes. Then you've also got the handling of money. Besides you're far away from us, so you're arrogant and audacious. Night after night, you get bad characters together; you gamble for money; and you keep women and young boys. And though you now fling away money with such a high hand, do you still presume to come and receive gifts? But as you can't manage to filch anything to take along with you, it will do you good to get beans, with the pole used for carrying water. Wait until the new year is over, and then I'll certainly report you to your uncle Secundus."
Chia Ch'in got crimson in the face, and did not venture to utter a single word by way of extenuation. A servant, however, then announced that the Prince from the Pei mansion had sent a pair of scrolls and a purse.
At this announcement, Chia Chen immediately told Chia Jung to go out and entertain the messengers. "And just say," he added, "that I'm not at home."
Chia Jung went on his way. Chia Chen, meanwhile, dismissed Chia Ch'in; and, seeing the things taken away, he returned to his quarters and finished his evening meal with Mrs. Yu. But nothing of any note occurred during that night.
The next day, he had, needless to say, still more things to give his mind to. Soon arrived the twenty ninth day of the twelfth moon, and everything was in perfect readiness. In the two mansions alike, the gate guardian gods and scrolls were renovated. The hanging tablets were newly varnished. The peach charms glistened like new. In the Ning Kuo mansion, every principal door, starting from the main entrance, the ceremonial gates, the doors of the large pavilions, of the winter apartments, and inner pavilions, the inner three gates, the inner ceremonial gates and the inner boundary gates, straight up to the doors of the main halls, was flung wide open. At the bottom of the steps, were placed on either side large and lofty vermilion candles, of uniform colour; which when lit presented the appearance of a pair of golden dragons.
On the morrow, dowager lady Chia and those with any official status, donned the court dress consistent with their grade, and taking first and foremost a retinue of inmates with them, they entered the palace in eight bearer state chairs, and presented their congratulations. After acquitting themselves of the ceremonial rites, and partaking of a banquet, they betook themselves back, and alighted from their chairs on their arrival at the winter hall of the Ning mansion. The young men, who had not followed the party to court, waited, arranged in their proper order, in front of the entrance the King mansion, and subsequently led the way into the ancestral temple.
But to return to Pao-ch'in. This was the first occasion, on which she put her foot inside to look at the inner precincts of the Chia ancestral temple, and as she did so, she scrutinized with minute attention all the details that met her gaze in the halls dedicated to their forefathers. These consisted, in fact, of a distinct courtyard on the west side of the Ning mansion. Within the balustrade, painted black, stood five apartments. Over the main entrance to these was suspended a flat tablet with the inscription in four characters: 'Ancestral hall of the Chia family.' On the side of these was recorded the fact that it had been the handiwork of Wang Hsi-feng, specially promoted to the rank of Grand Tutor of the Heir Apparent, and formerly Chancellor of the Imperial Academy. On either side, was one of a pair of scrolls, bearing the motto:
Besmear the earth with your liver and brains, all ye people, out of gratitude for the bounty of (the Emperor's) protection! The reputation (of the Chia family) reaches the very skies. Hundred generations rejoice in the splendour of the sacrifices accorded them.
This too had been executed by Wang, the Grand Tutor.
As soon as the court was entered, a raised road was reached, paved with white marble, on both sides of which were planted deep green fir trees, and kingfisher-green cypress trees. On the moon-shaped platform were laid out antiquities, tripods, libation-vases, and other similar articles. In front of the antechamber was hung a gold-coloured flat tablet, with nine dragons, and the device:
Like a dazzling star is the statesman, who assists the Emperor.
This was the autograph of a former Emperor.
On both sides figured a pair of antithetical scrolls, with the motto:
Their honours equal the sun and moon in lustre. Their fame is without bounds. It descends to their sons and grandsons.