The Lovely Xiangling Wrongly Suffers Her Greedy Husband’s Rod; Wang the Daoist Talks Nonsense About a Cure for Jealousy

After hearing what Xiangling said, Jingui twisted her neck, curled her lip, snorted twice through her nose, clapped her hands, and sneered, “Who ever smelled fragrance in a water-caltrop flower? If water-caltrop flowers count as fragrant, where are the properly fragrant flowers to go? It makes no sense at all!”

Xiangling said, “Not only water-caltrop flowers. Lotus leaves and lotus seed pods all have a fresh fragrance. That fragrance is different from ordinary flower scents. On a quiet night or early morning, if you pay close attention, it is even more pleasant than other flowers. Even water caltrops, gorgon nuts, reed leaves, and reed roots, when touched by dew and frost, give off a clear scent that refreshes the heart.”

Jingui retorted, “By that reasoning, the fragrance of orchids and osmanthus is not good?” Xiangling was speaking with feeling and forgot to avoid the taboo. She answered without thinking, “The fragrance of orchids and osmanthus is beyond comparison with other flowers.”

As soon as she finished, Jingui’s maid Baochan pointed at Xiangling’s face and shouted, “You are courting death! How dare you call our mistress’s name directly!” Xiangling suddenly realized, was very embarrassed, and quickly smiled and apologized. “It slipped out. Please do not take offense, Mistress.”

Jingui pretended to smile. “It is a small matter. There is no need to be so careful. Only I think the word ‘fragrant’ is not suitable. I intend to give you a new name. Do you accept?” Xiangling quickly said, “What are you saying, Mistress? My very life now belongs to you. Changing my name is not something you need ask my consent for. Whichever word you think good, use it.”

Jingui said, “You say that, but I fear Miss Bao will take it badly and think: the name I gave has been changed by you. You have only been here a few days, and already you overturn my idea.” Xiangling explained, “When I was first bought, it was Old Lady Xue who had me serve. So Miss Bao gave me my name. Later I served the young master, and I had nothing to do with Miss Bao. Now that there is a mistress, it matters even less. Besides, Miss Bao is understanding and reasonable. She will not care about such a small thing.”

Jingui then said, “Since that is so, ‘fragrant’ is not as suitable as ‘autumn.’ Water-caltrop flowers and water caltrops grow in autumn, so it has more reason than ‘fragrant.’” Xiangling agreed, and from then on her name was changed to Qiuling, Autumn Caltrop. Baochai heard of it and paid it no mind.

Xue Pan was greedy by nature. After marrying Jingui, he took a fancy to Jingui’s maid Baochan. Baochan was somewhat pretty and frivolous in manner. Xue Pan deliberately teased her when handing her tea or water. Baochan understood, but feared Jingui and did not dare be forward, always watching Jingui’s expression.

Jingui had long seen through Xue Pan’s mind. She thought to herself: I want to deal with Xiangling and have found no chance. Since he has taken a fancy to Baochan, I may as well give Baochan to him. Once Xue Pan has Baochan, he will naturally neglect Xiangling. When they are distant, I will take the chance to settle Xiangling. Baochan is my own person, and afterward she will be easy to control. Having made up her mind, she waited for the moment.

One evening Xue Pan drank a little wine and called Baochan to pour tea. When he took the cup, he deliberately pinched Baochan’s hand. Baochan pretended to dodge. Her hand jerked back, and the teacup fell with a clatter, spilling tea all over the floor and their clothes. Xue Pan was embarrassed and blamed Baochan for not holding it steady. Baochan said it was the young master who had not taken it properly. Jingui sneered, “Anyone can see what you two are up to. Do not take others for fools.” Xue Pan bowed his head and said nothing. Baochan flushed and withdrew.

At bedtime, Jingui deliberately drove Xue Pan off to sleep elsewhere. “So that you will not sit there yearning and making eyes at her.” Xue Pan only laughed. Jingui said, “If you want something, tell me plainly. Sneaking about is ugly.” Borrowing the courage of wine, Xue Pan knelt on the quilt and pulled at Jingui. “Good sister, if you will give Baochan to me, I will do anything you ask. If you wanted a man’s head, I would get it for you.”

Jingui laughed. “That makes no sense. If you like someone, take her openly into your room, so outsiders will not see anything improper. I do not want any benefit.” Xue Pan was overjoyed. That night he flattered Jingui in every way. The next day he did not go out, and at home he and Baochan grew bolder.

By afternoon, Jingui deliberately went out, leaving the room empty for the two. Xue Pan pulled Baochan to him. Baochan half resisted, half yielded, and they were about to succeed. Jingui had already calculated the moment. When the two were inseparable, she called the little maid Xiao She’er. Xiao She’er was an orphan girl Jingui had brought with her from home and used only for rough work. Jingui told her, “Go and call Qiuling. Tell her to fetch a handkerchief from my room. Do not say it is my idea.”

Xiao She’er found Xiangling. “Miss Ling, the mistress left her handkerchief in the room. Please fetch it for her.” Xiangling had lately been constantly harassed by Jingui and was always careful, hoping to please her. Hearing this, she hurried into the room to get the handkerchief. Instead she ran straight in and came upon Xue Pan and Baochan. Xiangling was so ashamed that her face turned red. She turned to flee.

Xue Pan thought the affair had already been tacitly allowed by Jingui. The door was not even shut. When Xiangling burst in, he felt somewhat ashamed, but was not greatly afraid. Baochan was competitive and proud. Having been discovered, she was so ashamed and angry that she pushed Xue Pan away and ran out, crying that Xue Pan had forced her. Xue Pan’s good business was interrupted. His lust turned to rage, and he vented it all on Xiangling. He chased after her, spat, and cursed, “Dead whore! What funeral are you wailing at here?” Xiangling saw that things were bad and quickly ran off. When Xue Pan looked for Baochan again, she was gone. He could only curse Xiangling bitterly.

After supper Xue Pan got drunk again. While bathing, the water was a little too hot for his feet, and he was sure Xiangling had deliberately tried to harm him. He ran out naked and kicked and beat Xiangling. Xiangling had never suffered such injustice and could only grieve in secret.

That night Jingui privately agreed with Baochan: tonight Xue Pan and Baochan would go to Xiangling’s room to do their business, and Xiangling would come to sleep with Jingui. Xiangling was unwilling. Jingui scolded her for despising her and for wanting to idle and be lazy. She wept and complained, “Your master has taken my person, and you still will not come to keep me company. You want to drive me to death!” Xue Pan feared his good affair with Baochan would be spoiled, so he too came and scolded Xiangling. “You do not know what is good for you! If you do not move over, I will beat you!”

Xiangling had no choice but to carry her bedding over. Jingui told her to sleep directly on the floor. Xiangling had to obey. She had just lain down when Jingui called for tea, then for her legs to be rubbed. She tormented her seven or eight times in one night, not letting her rest for a moment. Xue Pan, having got Baochan, was very pleased with himself and cast everyone else from his mind. Jingui secretly ground her teeth: Let you be happy for a few days. I will deal with you slowly.

Half a month later, Jingui suddenly pretended to be ill. Her heart hurt sharply, and her limbs could not move. Doctors were called, but she did not improve. Everyone in the household said Xiangling had angered the mistress into illness. After two days of commotion, someone found a paper figure in Jingui’s pillow. On the paper were written Jingui’s birth date and the eight characters of her fate, with five needles stuck into the heart and the joints of the limbs. The whole household was in an uproar and at once reported it to Aunt Xue.

Aunt Xue was thrown into panic. Xue Pan was even more furious and wanted to interrogate the servants. Jingui pretended to say, “There is no need to wrong everyone. I think Baochan made the curse.” Xue Pan said, “Baochan has had no time to enter your room alone these days. Why wrong a good person?” Jingui sneered, “Who else but her? Would I stab myself? Outsiders cannot come into my room as they please.” Xue Pan said, “Xiangling follows you every day. She knows best. Interrogate Xiangling first.”

Jingui pretended to urge him otherwise. “Whoever is interrogated will not confess. Better to pretend we know nothing. Even if I am killed by the curse, you can marry a pretty new wife. In good conscience, all three of you find me in the way.” As she spoke, she wept loudly. Xue Pan was enraged by these words. He seized the door bar and rushed out, beating Xiangling over the head and face, insisting that she had cursed and harmed Jingui. Xiangling cried out that she was innocent.

Aunt Xue hurried over and stopped him. “You beat her without asking clearly! This girl has served you for years and has always been devoted. How could she do such a wicked thing? First find out the truth, then raise your hand!”

When Jingui heard her mother-in-law protecting Xiangling, she feared Xue Pan would soften. She wept even harder and cried, “For half a month you have kept Baochan and not let her return to my room. I wanted to question Baochan, and you protected her. Now you protect Qiuling too. Just kill me and marry a fine new wife. Why use witchcraft to harm me?”

Xue Pan grew more frantic. Aunt Xue watched Jingui make this scene and use such threats, and she was disgusted. But her son had grown used to being controlled by Jingui. Now that Xue Pan had secretly taken the maid, Jingui had a hold on him. Whether the curse was true or false was hard to tell. As the saying goes, even a good judge cannot settle family troubles. Parents-in-law could not manage quarrels in the inner rooms. Aunt Xue could only scold Xue Pan angrily. “Good-for-nothing! You dally even with your wife’s maid and let your wife get a hold over you. What face have you to meet anyone? You beat people without asking right from wrong. I know you are fond of the new and tired of the old. If she is no good, you are not allowed to beat her. I will call a slave dealer and sell her, and we will all be quiet!”

Aunt Xue told Xiangling to pack her things and come with her, and sent someone to call a broker. When Xue Pan saw his mother angry, he bowed his head and did not dare speak. Jingui cried and shouted through the window, “Old Lady, sell her if you must, but do not drag others in! Are we a jealous pair who cannot tolerate anyone? If we despised her, why did we take my maid into his room in the first place? Who is the thorn in whose eye? Just because the Xue family has money, you can buy and sell people as you please? You begged to marry me. Now that the business is done, you want to drive me out?” She cried, shouted, rolled on the floor, and beat herself.

Xue Pan was torn both ways and could only sigh and complain of bad luck. Baochai quickly coaxed Aunt Xue into the inner room and urged, “Our family has always only bought people, never sold them. Mother is confused with anger. If word gets out, people will laugh. If my brother and sister-in-law do not like Xiangling, she can stay with me. I am short-handed as it is.” Aunt Xue said, “Keeping her will only cause more trouble. Sending her away would be cleaner.” Baochai said, “If she stays with me and is not allowed into the front courtyard, it will be much the same as selling her.” Xiangling ran to Aunt Xue and wept, begging to stay with Baochai. Aunt Xue had no choice but to let the matter drop.

From then on Xiangling stayed with Baochai and no longer went to the front courtyard where Xue Pan and Jingui lived. Even so, she often grieved alone facing the moon and sighed under the lamp. Xiangling had always been frail. After years in Xue Pan’s room, she had a blood ailment and had never conceived. Now, after repeated beatings, scoldings, and torments, she developed dry-blood consumption. Day by day she grew thinner, often feverish, with no appetite. Medicine did her no good.

After that Jingui made scenes many more times. Aunt Xue and Baochai could only weep in secret and lament their bitter fate. Once in a while Xue Pan, drunk, tried to resist. He would take up a stick to beat her, and Jingui would thrust her body toward him and tell him to beat her as he liked. If he took a knife, she would stretch out her neck. In the end Xue Pan could not bring himself to be cruel and had to give up. After several such times, Jingui’s power grew greater and greater, and Xue Pan grew more and more cowardly.

Though Xiangling was still in the Xue household, it was as if she were not. Jingui for the time being stopped targeting her and turned to torment Baochan. Baochan had a fierce temper, completely unlike Xiangling. After becoming intimate with Xue Pan, she gradually stopped respecting Jingui. When Jingui bullied her, she would not yield. At first they quarreled. Later, when Jingui beat and scolded her, Baochan would make a scene, roll on the floor, threaten to die, and brandish a knife or a rope. Xue Pan was caught between the two and could not handle it. He simply moved out to sleep in an outer room.

When Jingui was in a good mood, she gathered people to play cards and dice. She loved to gnaw bones. Every day she had chickens and ducks killed. The meat was given to the servants, and she used only fried crispy bones to go with wine. When she was displeased, she cursed loudly. Aunt Xue and Baochai no longer paid her any attention. Xue Pan regretted all day that he had married this troublemaker. Everyone in the Ning and Rong mansions heard of the Xue family’s troubles and sighed.

By this time Baoyu’s hundred days were over, and he could go out and walk about. He had seen Jingui. She was pretty, much like the other sisters, and he could not imagine that her temper was so fierce. He was greatly puzzled. One day Baoyu went to pay his respects to Lady Wang. He happened to meet Yingchun’s old nurse, who told him that Sun Shaozu was vicious and that Yingchun could only weep secretly and wanted to return to the Jia household for a few days.

Lady Wang said, “I had meant to fetch her, but I was delayed by too many trifles. When Baoyu came back last time, he mentioned it too. Tomorrow is a good day. I will send someone to bring Yingchun home.” Just then Grandmother Jia sent someone to find Baoyu and tell him to go early the next morning to the Tianqi Temple to fulfill a vow. Baoyu had not been out for a long time and was so happy he could not sleep all night.

The next morning Baoyu set out of the city with nurses and servants. They reached the Tianqi Temple, burned incense, and fulfilled the vow. The temple was ancient, and the statues were fierce and frightening. Baoyu was timid. He hurried through the incense and withdrew to the Daoist courtyard to rest. After a meal and some idle walking, Baoyu grew sleepy and wanted to nap. The nurses, afraid he would sleep, invited the old Daoist Wang from the temple to keep him company and talk.

This old Daoist Wang had long sold plasters outside and made money from folk remedies. Everyone in the Ning and Rong mansions knew him. His nickname was Wang Yitie, “One Plaster Wang,” meaning one plaster of his cured all ills. Wang Yitie came in, and everyone asked him to tell stories. Baoyu asked him what illnesses his plasters cured. Wang Yitie bragged that his plaster contained one hundred and twenty ingredients and could cure all internal and external diseases.

Baoyu said, “I do not believe one plaster can cure every disease. Let me ask you: can a woman’s jealousy be cured?” Wang Yitie first said no, then made up a “jealousy-curing decoction”: one good autumn pear, two mace of rock sugar, one mace of dried tangerine peel, and three bowls of water. Boil the pear until soft. Eat one pear every morning.

Baoyu asked whether it would work. Wang Yitie laughed. “If one dose does not work, take ten. If this year does not cure it, take it until next year. Pear, rock sugar, and tangerine peel do no harm. They moisten the lungs and stop coughs. Keep eating until you are a hundred. In the end everyone dies. When the person is dead, jealousy naturally ends. Then the illness is cured.” Baoyu and Mingyan laughed and scolded him for being glib. Wang Yitie admitted, “My plasters are fake to begin with. If I had a real immortal remedy, I would have become an immortal myself long ago. Why would I still be scraping a living in a temple?”

Before long the auspicious hour arrived. Baoyu went out to burn incense. When it was done, they returned to the city.

Yingchun had already been back at the Jia mansion for half a day. The Sun family’s serving women had eaten supper and gone back. Yingchun wept in Lady Wang’s room and told of her grievances: Sun Shaozu was lustful, fond of gambling, and given to drink. Almost all the maids and young wives in his house had been abused by him. When I tried to advise him, he cursed me. He also said that Jia She had taken five thousand taels of silver from the Sun family and had sold me to him in payment. He pointed at me and said, “Do not try to press me with your young lady’s status. Your father took my silver and sold you to me to settle the debt. If you make me angry, I will beat you and drive you to the servants’ quarters.” He also said that in those years the Jia family had curried favor with the Sun family for their wealth, and that this marriage, to outsiders, looked like snobbery.

Yingchun wept bitterly as she spoke. Lady Wang and the sisters all shed tears. Lady Wang could only comfort her. “When one meets such a man, there is no help for it. At the time, your uncle Jia Zheng advised the Elder Master not to make this match, but he would not listen. Child, this is your fate.”

Yingchun wept, “I do not believe fate can be so bitter! I lost my mother when young and lived peacefully here with my aunt for a few years. Now I have come to this!” Lady Wang asked where she wanted to stay. Yingchun said she missed Purple Caltrop Isle in the Grand View Garden and wanted to return to her old rooms for a few days. She did not know whether she would ever be able to come back.

Lady Wang quickly had Purple Caltrop Isle prepared and told the sisters to keep her company and comfort her. She warned Baoyu not to tell Grandmother Jia about Yingchun’s ill treatment, lest the old lady grieve. Baoyu agreed.

That night Yingchun returned to Purple Caltrop Isle to rest. The sisters were especially close to her. She stayed three days in a row before going to Lady Xing’s side. She took leave of Grandmother Jia and Lady Wang and said goodbye to all the sisters. Everyone was very sad. She stayed two more days at Lady Xing’s, and then the Sun family sent people to fetch her. Yingchun feared Sun Shaozu’s ferocity and could only swallow her grief and go back. Lady Xing did not care whether Yingchun and her husband lived well or not, and only dealt with matters perfunctorily. What happened afterward will be told in the next chapter.