CHAPTER XXI. Page 3 _The Dream of the Red Chamber
"You fool!" lady Feng laughed, "had he any things of the sort, would he be likely to let you and I discover them!"
With these words still on her lips, she took the patterns and went her way; whereupon P'ing Erh pointed at her nose, and shook her head to and fro. "In this matter," she smiled, "how much you should be grateful to me!" A remark which so delighted Chia Lien that his eyebrows distended, and his eyes smiled, and running over, he clasped her in his embrace, and called her promiscuously: "My darling, my pet, my own treasure!"
"This," observed P'ing Erh, with the tress in her hand, "will be my source of power, during all my lifetime! if you treat me kindly, then well and good! but if you behave unkindly, then we'll at once produce this thing!"
"Do put it away, please," Chia Lien entreated smirkingly, "and don't, on an any account, let her know about it!" and as he uttered these words, he noticed that she was off her guard, and, with a snatch, readily grabbed it adding laughingly: "In your hands, it would be a source of woe, so that it's better that I should burn it, and have done with it!" Saying this he simultaneously shoved it down the sides of his boot, while P'ing Erh shouted as she set her teeth close: "You wicked man! you cross the river and then demolish the bridge! but do you imagine that I'll by and by again tell lies on your behalf!"
Chia Lien perceiving how heart-stirring her seductive charms were, forthwith clasped her in his arms, and begged her to be his; but P'ing Erh snatched her hands out of his grasp and ran away out of the room; which so exasperated Chia Lien that as he bent his body, he exclaimed, full of indignation: "What a dreadful niggardly young wench! she actually sets her mind to stir up people's affections with her wanton blandishments, and then, after all, she runs away!"
"If I be wanton, it's my own look-out;" P'ing Erh answered, from outside the window, with a grin, "and who told you to arouse your affections? Do you forsooth mean to imply that my wish is to become your tool? And did she come to know about it would she again ever forgive me?"
"You needn't dread her!" Chia Lien urged; "wait till my monkey is up, and I'll take this jealous woman, and beat her to atoms; and she'll then know what stuff I'm made of. She watches me just as she would watch a thief! and she's only to hobnob with men, and I'm not to say a word to any girl! and if I do say aught to a girl, or get anywhere near one, she must at once give way to suspicion. But with no regard to younger brothers or nephews, to young and old, she prattles and giggles with them, and doesn't entertain any fear that I may be jealous; but henceforward I too won't allow her to set eyes upon any man."
"If she be jealous, there's every reason," P'ing Erh answered, "but for you to be jealous on her account isn't right. Her conduct is really straightforward, and her deportment upright, but your conduct is actuated by an evil heart, so much so that even I don't feel my heart at ease, not to say anything of her."
"You two," continued Chia Lien, "have a mouth full of malicious breath! Everything the couple of you do is invariably proper, while whatever I do is all from an evil heart! But some time or other I shall bring you both to your end with my own hands!"
This sentence was scarcely at an end, when lady Feng walked into the court. "If you're bent upon chatting," she urgently inquired, upon seeing P'ing Erh outside the window, "why don't you go into the room? and what do you mean, instead, by running out, and speaking with the window between?"
Chia Lien from inside took up the string of the conversation. "You should ask her," he said. "It would verily seem as if there were a tiger in the room to eat her up."
"There's not a single person in the room," P'ing Erh rejoined, "and what shall I stay and do with him?"
"It's just the proper thing that there should be no one else! Isn't it?" lady Feng remarked grinning sarcastically.
"Do these words allude to me?" P'ing Erh hastily asked, as soon as she had heard what she said.
Lady Feng forthwith laughed. "If they don't allude to you," she continued, "to whom do they?"
"Don't press me to come out with some nice things!" P'ing Erh insinuated, and, as she spoke, she did not even raise the portiere (for lady Feng to enter), but straightway betook herself to the opposite side.
Lady Feng lifted the portiere with her own hands, and walked into the room. "That girl P'ing Erh," she exclaimed, "has gone mad, and if this hussey does in real earnest wish to try and get the upper hand of me, it would be well for you to mind your skin."
Chia Lien listened to her, as he kept reclining on the couch. "I never in the least knew," he ventured, clapping his hands and laughing, "that P'ing Erh was so dreadful; and I must, after all, from henceforth look up to her with respect!"
"It's all through your humouring her," lady Feng rejoined; "so I'll simply settle scores with you and finish with it."
"Ts'ui!" ejaculated Chia Lien at these words, "because you two can't agree, must you again make a scapegoat of me! Well then, I'll get out of the way of both of you!"
"I'll see where you'll go and hide," lady Feng observed.
"I've got somewhere to go!" Chia Lien added; and with these words, he was about to go, when lady Feng urged: "Don't be off! I have something to tell you."
What it is, is not yet known, but, reader, listen to the account given in the next chapter.