Chapter 389 — Old Acquaintances
Purple Streets of Chang'an Page 2 of 2
The Elder Madam was badly startled and cried out, "Madam, the Jining Marquis is your own sister's husband!"
Dou Zhiwei laughed coldly, and spoke in a voice half warning, half remonstrance: "The Jining Marquis may be my sister's husband, but the Young Lord is my husband!"
The Elder Madam's face changed on the instant; she rose and took her leave, carrying Madam Tan off with her.
Ganlu knew well that before outsiders Dou Zhiwei always stood up for Song Yan. Only when the Elder Madam and her daughter-in-law had gone did she venture, in a low voice, "This business — will you really not ask the Young Lord about it?"
"Whatever the Young Lord does, he has his reasons. If I had to haul him up for cross-examination every time someone came to my door with a pack of nonsense, how would this household ever get through its days?"
Ganlu blushed with embarrassment.
Dou Zhiwei soon put the matter out of her mind.
For Chen Yanzhou had come back.
And not only come back — he had brought an old man of sixty-odd years in his company.
The old man's surname was Song; his given name, Jin; his courtesy name, Shize.
He was the grandfather of the girl who had once been named Meiyi and was now called Fuye.
Song Shize was past sixty and not a tall man, yet he held his back straight as a rod; his grizzled hair was neatly combed, his coarse cloth robe washed clean, and his eyes flashed with a keen light, so that he looked hale and hard.
Kneeling before Dou Zhiwei, tears streaming down his aged face, he said, "My family was granted the surname Song from my grandfather's generation; by my own time we had received the grace of the Duke of Zhenguo's house besides, and I served in the old Duke's study. When I came of age I was sent out to serve as a chief manager. After Madam Sun passed away and Madam Jiang took the household in hand, and the old Duke lay gravely ill, I asked of my own accord to be allowed to go to the estate at Tianjin Guard and live out my days with my son and his wife. When the old Duke died, I helped perform the third-day rites... Never did I imagine that the Duke would come to what he is now! The people I knew are all gone, and not a word of the reason can be got out of anyone. I wished to beg the Young Lord to make some decision on this matter. But the Young Lord goes about hedged by guards, and no ordinary man can come near him; and I left the household the very year the Young Lord was born — even if I announced my own name, he would scarcely know me. I was frantic with worry, until I heard that the Madam had ordered the steward of the Daxing estate to send a maid to serve in Yizhi Hall. Only then did I see a hope, and I sent in my only granddaughter... Madam, we have waited three years for this day!"
He knocked his forehead on the ground before her, thud after thud.
Dou Zhiwei arched an eyebrow.
To be permitted to help with the third-day rites — that marked a man as a trusted, intimate servant, a steward of great face.
That he had left the Duke of Zhenguo's household for a comfortable retirement on the Tianjin Guard estate must have been the old order giving way to the new — making room for Madam Jiang's people. And after Madam Jiang, her own kin were the ones advanced; the descendants of men like him never got the chance to serve in the household again, but drifted to one estate or another and became ordinary farmers.
She signaled to Chen Yanzhou to raise the man up, had a small stool brought for Song Shize to sit on, and said unhurriedly, "By rights, the head of the Duke of Zhenguo's house is the Duke himself, yet you say you wish to ask the Young Lord to make a decision for you — which shows plainly that you know in your heart why the people you knew have vanished. As for no reason being discoverable, that is even more nonsense. Since you have come to see me, your mind is plainly made up already; let us have the skylight open and speak plainly, and we shall at least have dealt honestly with each other. This testing of me with a truth here and a falsehood there — I have neither the time nor the taste for it. Understand this: besides your granddaughter, I have in my service a girl whose grandmother once served two Duchesses, and another who once held a post in the old Duchess's apartments. I do not know their names, but you, Chief Steward Song, are an old servant of that house and must know them very well. Since I could find you, I can find them too. It is only a matter of spending a little more time."
Song Shize's face froze; then a look of deep embarrassment came over him.
That the Young Lord's wife had found him was due in part, to be sure, to the clues he had purposely left behind; but it also showed plainly how shrewd and capable she was. How, at a first meeting, to save the Duke's face and at the same time leave a good impression on the Young Lord's wife — he had been turning that over in his mind ever since he first learned that the Duke of Zhenguo's household meant to choose maids from among the hereditary servants on its estates, had turned it over down to this very day; and who could have guessed it would come to this... And now the matter stood at the edge of life and death; there was no room left to weigh the times and take his measure of them, no room for hesitation. Even if he spoke amiss, the worst could be no worse than this.
He set his jaw, and with a heavy thud dropped once more to his knees before Dou Zhiwei.
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Brothers and sisters, I can finally get into my author's dashboard again.
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