After Yingchun returned to her husband’s house, Lady Xing behaved as though nothing at all had happened. Lady Wang, however, had raised the girl for years, and once she was alone she could not help grieving. It was in this mood that Baoyu came to pay his respects. Seeing traces of tears on Lady Wang’s face, he did not dare sit at first and only stood nearby until she told him to come up and take a place beside her.

She noticed that he looked distracted, as though he wanted to speak but was holding back, and asked what was the matter. Baoyu answered that he could not bear to think of what Yingchun was suffering. Since hearing of her condition the day before, he said, he had scarcely slept. A girl from a great family should not have to endure such humiliation, and Yingchun of all people was the gentlest, least quarrelsome of them all. Yet she had fallen into the hands of a hard-hearted man who understood nothing of a woman’s distress. He nearly wept as he spoke.

Lady Wang could only answer with the old helplessness reserved for married daughters: once a girl leaves home, what can her family really do? Baoyu then proposed, with complete earnestness, that they tell the Dowager Lady everything and simply bring Yingchun back to live again in Ziling Continent, so that she could eat, play, and live together with her brothers and sisters instead of suffering insults in the Sun household. If her husband came to fetch her, they could refuse him every time and say it was Grandmother’s decision.

Lady Wang found the idea both absurd and touching. She scolded him for talking nonsense. A daughter, she said, must eventually marry out; whether she meets good fortune or bad is largely a matter of fate. Not every girl becomes an imperial consort like his eldest sister. Yingchun was only a new bride, her husband still young, and with both parties unaccustomed to one another there were bound to be frictions. In a few years, once tempers were understood and children were born, things might improve. Above all, she forbade him to mention a single word of this in front of the old matriarch.

Baoyu fell silent at once. He sat a while, spiritless, then withdrew with all his indignation still bottled inside him. Unable to vent it anywhere else, he went straight through the garden to Xiaoxiang Lodge.

The moment he stepped in, he burst into loud tears. Daiyu had just finished washing and arranging herself. Startled, she asked what had happened and who had offended him. Baoyu bent over the table and sobbed so hard that he could not answer. After watching him in silence for a time, Daiyu asked whether someone else had angered him, or whether she herself had somehow done so. He waved his hand: neither, neither.

When she pressed him again, he said with bitter despair that it would be better if all of them died sooner rather than later, because there was no pleasure in living. Daiyu was shocked and asked if he had gone mad. Baoyu said he was not mad at all. If she thought of Yingchun’s condition, she could not help being heartsick too. Why, he asked, must people marry when they grow up, only to be delivered into such suffering?

He remembered the early days of the Begonia Poetry Club, when they had gathered to compose poems and act as hosts in turn, how lively and joyful those days had been. Now Baochai had gone home, Xiangling could no longer come freely, Yingchun had married out, and the companions who truly understood one another were no longer together. He had wanted to ask Grandmother to bring Yingchun back, but Lady Wang had dismissed him as foolish, so he had not dared persist. In such a short time, he said, the whole aspect of the garden had already changed. What would it look like in a few years? The more he thought of it, the more unbearable it became.

Daiyu listened in silence. Her head lowered little by little, and she slowly retreated onto the kang without saying a word. After a long sigh, she turned inward and lay down.

At that moment Zijuan entered with tea and found them both in this state, not knowing what to make of it. Then Xiren arrived and announced that the Dowager Lady was asking for Baoyu. Daiyu sat up to offer her a seat, but her eyes were already red from crying. Baoyu, seeing this, hastened to say that his words had only been foolish talk and that she must not grieve over them; if she did, she must at least take care of her health. He told her to rest and said he would return after seeing what Grandmother wanted.

When he left, Xiren quietly asked Daiyu what had happened between them. Daiyu replied that Baoyu was grieving for his second sister, while she herself had only rubbed her eyes because they itched. Xiren said nothing and hurried after Baoyu. By the time he reached the Dowager Lady’s quarters, however, she had already retired for her midday rest, so he had no choice but to return to Green Delights Court.

That afternoon, after his nap, he felt listless and picked up a book at random. Xiren brewed tea and attended him. The volume in his hand happened to be the Ancient Music Bureau Poems. When he turned the pages, his eye fell on Cao Cao’s line, “Facing wine, one should sing—how long does life last?” The words struck him painfully. He put that book down, took up another, and found himself reading the prose of the Jin period, but after a few pages he shut it again and sat with his cheek propped in one hand, lost in thought.

Xiren brought over the tea and asked why he had stopped reading. He did not answer, only took a sip and set the cup aside. She could make nothing of his mood and could only stand watching him. Suddenly he rose, muttering to himself, “What a thing—‘to let the body roam beyond all forms’!” Xiren wanted to laugh, but did not dare ask what he meant. Instead she urged him to go out into the garden if he did not care for books just now, lest he brood himself ill.

He answered vaguely and wandered away.

He first came to Qinfang Pavilion, where the place looked sparse and deserted, rooms empty after people had gone. From there he went to the Fragrance Herb Court; the aromatic plants were just as before, but the doors and windows were shut. As he turned past the Lotus Breeze Pavilion, he saw several figures leaning along the railing near the reed-lined bank, while some young maids crouched nearby searching the ground for something.

Baoyu slipped behind a rockery and listened.

One voice said, “Let’s see whether it comes up again or not.” It sounded like Li Wen. Another laughed, “Good, it’s gone down. I knew it wouldn’t come back up.” That was Tanchun. Then came two more voices—Li Qi and Xing Xiuyan—telling one another not to move, saying the fish would surface eventually. A moment later someone cried, “There it is!”

Unable to resist, Baoyu picked up a small brick fragment and threw it into the water with a loud splash. All four girls jumped and exclaimed that some mischievous person had given them a fright. Baoyu burst from behind the rocks laughing. “You’re having such fun here, and not one of you called me!”

Tanchun replied that she had known it could only be her second brother playing tricks. There was no use talking; he must now compensate them for the fish they had nearly caught and had scared away. Baoyu declared that since they had not invited him, he ought to fine them instead. Everyone laughed.

Then he proposed that they all fish and test their luck: whoever caught a fish would have good fortune for the year, and whoever failed would have poor luck. Tanchun yielded the first cast to Li Wen, who refused it, so Tanchun herself took the rod. She warned Baoyu not to frighten away her fish again. This time he promised to behave.

Tanchun dropped the line into the water, and before ten sentences had passed a willow-leaf fish took the hook and dragged the float under. She flicked the rod up and tossed the fish to the ground, where it flopped energetically while Shishu scrambled after it and finally cupped it in both hands and placed it in a little porcelain jar of fresh water.

The rod then passed to Li Wen. She felt the line twitch and quickly jerked it up, only to find an empty hook. She lowered it again. Another twitch—again nothing. When she examined the hook, she discovered it had bent inward. Laughing at the reason for her failure, she had it set right, baited with a fresh worm, and fitted again with a reed float. After a little while the float sank straight down; this time she pulled up a tiny crucian carp scarcely two inches long.

She smiled and offered the rod to Baoyu. He declined and said Tanchun and Xiuyan should finish first. Xiuyan said nothing. Li Qi insisted that Baoyu go before them, but just then a bubble appeared on the surface. Tanchun said there was no need for all this politeness—the fish were clearly gathering on her side, so Li Qi should cast quickly. Li Qi took the rod and immediately caught one. Xiuyan then caught one as well and returned the rod to Tanchun, who at last passed it to Baoyu.

Baoyu announced that he meant to imitate Jiang Taigong. He went down onto the stone ledge by the pond and sat close to the water to fish. But as soon as the fish saw his shadow, they scattered elsewhere. He swung the rod and waited a long time without the line stirring in the least. When at last a fish blew bubbles near the bank, he gave the rod a nervous jerk and frightened it away.

Growing impatient, he cried, “I’m the most impatient person in the world, and this fish has the slowest nature imaginable. What am I to do? Good fish, come quickly! Do me the kindness of helping me out!” The others laughed. Before the laughter had even died away, the line twitched slightly. Delighted, Baoyu hauled upward too hard, struck the rod against the stone, snapped it clean in two, and sent the line flying. The hook vanished entirely. This made them laugh even more. Tanchun remarked that she had never seen anyone so clumsy.

While they were still joking, Sheyue came running in a panic. The Dowager Lady had awakened and was calling urgently for Baoyu. All five started in alarm. Tanchun asked what it was about. Sheyue said she did not know, only that someone had said some matter had been exposed and Baoyu was to be questioned; Cousin Feng was to be called too.

Baoyu stood dumb for a moment, then said he wondered which poor maid had met with disaster this time. Tanchun urged him to hurry over and, if he learned anything, to have Sheyue bring them word.

When Baoyu entered the Dowager Lady’s room, he found Lady Wang sitting with her while they handled playing cards. Seeing no immediate sign of trouble, he felt half relieved. The old matriarch asked him about the serious illness he had suffered two years before, the one from which a crazed monk and a lame Daoist had supposedly cured him. What had he felt at the time?

Baoyu thought for a while and said that when the sickness first struck, he had been standing perfectly well when it felt as if someone had come up behind him and struck him on the head with a club. His eyes went black with pain, and he saw the whole room filled with hideous demons, green-faced and fanged, brandishing knives and cudgels. Once he lay on the kang, he felt as though iron hoops had been tightened around his skull. After that, the pain had been so severe that he knew nothing. But when recovery came, he remembered a flood of golden light shining from the main hall straight into his room. At that, the demons fled and vanished, his headache ceased, and his mind became clear.

The Dowager Lady turned to Lady Wang and said that this was more or less exactly the kind of thing she had expected.

Just then Wang Xifeng arrived. After paying her respects, she too was asked to describe the strange illness she had once suffered. Xifeng said her memory was not entirely clear, but she had felt as though evil spirits were dragging and tugging at her, trying to make her kill people. Whatever she seized, she wanted to strike with; whoever she saw, she wanted to attack. She knew she was exhausted, yet could not stop herself. When asked what she remembered from the moment of recovery, she said only that it seemed as though someone in the air had spoken a few words, though she could no longer recall them.

The Dowager Lady concluded that this made the culprit obvious. The two illnesses matched too closely. The old woman whom Baoyu had once mistakenly accepted as his godmother was indeed a thoroughly wicked creature, while the monk and Daoist had in truth saved his life.

Xifeng asked why the matter had suddenly come up. The Dowager Lady told her to ask Lady Wang instead.

Lady Wang explained that Jia Zheng had just reported news: Baoyu’s so-called godmother had been exposed as a fraud who trafficked in sinister magic. She had already been seized by the Imperial Guards and sent to the Ministry of Justice, where she faced a capital charge. The case had begun because a man named Pan Sanbao had sold a house to the pawnbroker across from him. After the price was raised several times, Pan still demanded more, and the pawnbroker would not agree. Pan then bribed the old woman to interfere.

Because she often went in and out of the pawnshop and was on familiar terms with the women of the household, she used some method on them that caused one of the women to fall victim to a possession-like illness, throwing the house into complete chaos. She then returned and claimed she could cure the affliction. Burning spirit-money and strange offerings, she seemed to bring about a recovery and in return extorted more than ten taels of silver from the household women.

But as Lady Wang put it, Heaven has eyes. One day the woman was hurrying home and dropped a silk bundle. The people from the pawnshop picked it up and found inside many paper figures and four pellets of strongly scented incense. While they were still puzzling over it, the old woman returned in search of the bundle. They seized her at once, searched her person, and found a box containing carved ivory figures of a naked man and woman—demonic effigies—and seven crimson embroidered needles. She was immediately handed over to the authorities.

Under questioning, many secrets concerning the wives and daughters of official and wealthy households came to light. Officers were informed, her home was searched, and there were discovered numerous clay idols of baleful spirits, several boxes of the same troublesome incense, and in an empty room behind the heated bed a seven-star lamp hanging beneath which stood straw figures—some with iron bands around their heads, some with nails through their chests, some with locks fastened at their throats. In her cabinets were countless paper dolls, and among them small account records noting which household had been “treated” and how much silver remained to be collected. She had also taken untold sums under the pretext of lamp oil, incense shares, and ritual fees.

Xifeng at once said that this must certainly have been the source of their illnesses. She remembered that after she recovered, that old fiend had come more than once to Aunt Zhao asking for silver. Whenever she saw Xifeng, her face changed color and her eyes took on a sinister look. Xifeng had felt suspicious then but never understood why. Now the reason was plain enough. As the woman who managed the household, Xifeng admitted she naturally provoked resentment, so it was no wonder someone might wish to harm her. But what enmity could Baoyu possibly have inspired to deserve so vicious an attack?

The Dowager Lady sighed that perhaps her own fondness for Baoyu, and comparative coldness toward Jia Huan, had planted this poison. Lady Wang replied that the culprit had already been condemned and could hardly be brought in for confrontation. Without direct evidence, Aunt Zhao would never admit anything. The matter was too ugly to make public, and if stirred up outside it would only bring disgrace. Better to let those who had done evil ruin themselves in time.

The Dowager Lady agreed there was sense in that. Without proof, nothing could be settled conclusively. Still, the Buddhas and bodhisattvas saw clearly enough. Compared with those old days of sickness, both Baoyu and Xifeng were doing well now. She told Xifeng not to dwell any further on it and invited both her and Lady Wang to stay for supper. Servants were called to prepare the meal.

In the middle of this, a maid came to tell Lady Wang that Jia Zheng wanted her to look for some item after she had finished attending the Dowager Lady’s dinner. The old matriarch told her to go, since it might be important. Lady Wang left Xifeng there and withdrew.

Back in her own rooms, after a little ordinary conversation and after finding the thing Jia Zheng wanted, Lady Wang was asked how Yingchun was faring in the Sun household. She answered that the girl had returned weeping, saying her husband was ferociously overbearing, and repeated the whole account. Jia Zheng sighed that he had long known the match was not ideal, but the arrangement had been fixed by the elder branch and he had been powerless to prevent it. For now, Yingchun would simply have to endure some grievance.

Lady Wang said that as a new bride she could only hope matters would improve later. Then she smiled unexpectedly.

Jia Zheng asked why. She told him she was laughing at Baoyu, who had come that very morning talking nothing but childish nonsense. When Jia Zheng asked what he had said, she recounted his proposal to bring Yingchun home for good and refuse to send her back. Even Jia Zheng could not help laughing.

Then he became serious and said that this reminded him of another matter. It would not do to leave Baoyu idling in the garden day after day. A daughter who comes to nothing eventually belongs to another household; a son who amounts to nothing is a much graver concern. Someone had lately recommended a teacher from the south, a man of both learning and character. But Jia Zheng thought southern scholars were often too mild, while boys in the capital were clever, unruly, and expert at evasion. If a teacher refused to shame them properly, he might spend every day merely coaxing them like babies and waste their lives. That was why older generations had often preferred to choose an older kinsman with some learning to oversee the family school.

The current master, Jia Dai-ru, might be only middling in scholarship, Jia Zheng said, but he could at least keep such boys under control and prevent things from being handled carelessly. Baoyu had already lost several years because of his father’s absences from office and his own recurring illnesses. Better to send him back to the clan school and have him resume study there.

Lady Wang agreed. Some review in the family school would do him good. Jia Zheng nodded, and the matter was settled.

The next morning, after Baoyu had dressed and washed, a page came to say that his father wanted to see him. He hurried to Jia Zheng’s study, saluted him, and stood waiting.

Jia Zheng asked what lessons he had been doing lately. A few pieces of calligraphy, he said, amounted to nothing. In his view Baoyu had grown even more dissipated than in earlier years. He was always feigning illness to avoid study, and now that he was well again he spent his days in the garden joking with the girls and even fooling around with maids, neglecting all proper business. A few poems and verses were no great marvel. In examinations and official advancement, prose writing was what mattered, and in that respect Baoyu had scarcely applied himself at all.

Then came the order: from that day on, no more composing poems or matching couplets. He was to devote himself exclusively to the formal eight-legged essay. He would be given one year. If after that there was no progress, he need not study at all, for Jia Zheng would not wish to claim such a son.

He called in Li Gui and instructed him that the next morning Mingyan was to accompany Baoyu, gather all the books he should be reading, bring them for inspection, and then Jia Zheng himself would escort the boy to the family school. Baoyu listened the whole time without daring to answer a word and then returned to Green Delights Court.

Xiren had been anxiously waiting for news. When she heard that books were to be gathered, she was actually pleased, but Baoyu immediately tried to send word to the Dowager Lady, hoping she would intervene. When she received his message, she had him summoned and told him simply to set his mind at ease and go for now. He was not to anger his father. If anyone made things too difficult for him, she said, she would be there.

With no way out, Baoyu returned and instructed the maids to wake him very early, since his father intended to take him personally to the school. Xiren and Sheyue agreed, and the two of them were so tense that they spent the night half awake in turns.

At dawn Xiren got him up, saw to his washing and dressing, and sent a little maid to summon Mingyan to wait at the second gate with the books and necessary things. After urging him more than once, she finally got him out the door. Baoyu first went by Jia Zheng’s study and discreetly asked whether his father had yet come over. A servant there replied that a client-scholar had just requested an audience; Jia Zheng was still dressing inside and had sent the visitor outside to wait. Hearing this, Baoyu felt slightly reassured and hurried on.

At just that moment Jia Zheng sent for him. After a few more admonitions, father and son set out together in a carriage, with Mingyan carrying the books behind them, until they arrived at the clan school.

Word had gone ahead, so Jia Dai-ru was already on his feet to receive them. Jia Zheng entered, saluted him, and exchanged greetings. Baoyu also came forward and paid his respects. Only after urging the elder teacher to sit did Jia Zheng take a seat himself.

He explained that he had brought Baoyu personally because he wished to make a formal request. The boy was no longer so young. If he was to establish himself in life and win any reputation, he must pursue the proper studies for the examinations. At home he did nothing but fool around with children; even when he understood enough to make a few poems, they were at best empty verses about wind and moon, dew and clouds, bearing no relation to the serious business of a lifetime.

Dai-ru said that from the boy’s appearance and natural intelligence he ought not to be incapable. Why, then, did he not apply himself, instead letting his heart run wild after play? Poetry was not something he could never learn; if he first succeeded in the proper career, there would still be time for that later.

Jia Zheng said this was exactly his own view. For the moment, all he wanted was for Baoyu to read, discuss the classics, and practice prose composition. If he failed to heed instruction, he begged Dai-ru to discipline him in earnest, so that his whole life would not be wasted under a mere name of study without its reality. Having said this, Jia Zheng rose and made another bow before taking his leave. Dai-ru escorted him to the entrance, asking that his respects be conveyed to the Dowager Lady.

Once he returned inside, Dai-ru found Baoyu seated in the southwest corner by a window, where a small rosewood desk had been set up. On its right lay two sets of old books and a thin volume of model essays. Mingyan had already hidden the paper, ink, brushes, and inkstone in the drawer.

Dai-ru asked after Baoyu’s former illness. Baoyu stood and answered that he was now completely recovered. The teacher then told him that, considering everything, it was time he worked hard. His father’s hopes for him were very earnest. For now he should go back through the books he had already studied from the beginning: sort through his texts in the early morning, practice writing after meals, discuss the books at noon, and recite a few essays each day.

Baoyu answered obediently, “Yes,” and sat down again. But he could not help looking around. Several of the old students from former days were gone, and a number of new boys had appeared, coarse and vulgar to an extraordinary degree. At once he thought of Qin Zhong. There was no one here now with whom he could speak heart to heart or keep company. The thought left him desolate, yet he did not dare say anything and could only stare gloomily at his book.

Dai-ru, seeing it was his first day back, told him he could go home a little early. But beginning the next day, there would be proper lessons. Since Baoyu was not actually dull, Dai-ru said, he would have him first explain a chapter or two aloud so that he could test how his studies had progressed in recent years and judge what level he had really reached.

At these words, Baoyu’s heart began to pound.