Chapter 20 — Passing Waters
Purple Streets of Chang'an · Page 2 of 4
She flew as though riding the wind, and every tree and blade of grass in the Dou compound swelled and shrank beneath her feet. She saw someone washing clothes by the well in the side courtyard, saw Aunt Ding standing beneath the eaves berating a little maid, saw the stillness of her mother's courtyard with not a soul in sight... It was as if everything around her lay within her view. The sensation was wonderfully strange and delightful.
Dou Zhiwei's laughter scattered like pearls upon a jade plate, crisp and pleasing.
Father's brows lifted in a smile as well.
Only Tuoniang came foolishly bounding out and planted herself before Dou Huaiying. "Seventh Master, that's too high, the Fourth Miss will fall! Please set her down at once!"
Dou Huaiying recognized Tuoniang and laughed. "I never knew you had such a loyal heart!" He did not scold her, but stepped around her and pushed Dou Yan, seated on the swing, forcefully out once more.
Tuoniang was frantic, sweating profusely.
Dou Shao basked in Tuoniang's concern, smiling with great delight.
She saw Old Yu come rushing out of her mother's room in a fluster, stand on the eaves' steps and call out once, and the maids and servant women who had vanished from sight surged over like a tide, then scattered in all directions, making the scene rather chaotic.
What had happened?
When the swing arced up again, Dou Yan craned her neck to look toward the main courtyard.
The little maids were still milling about in disarray, but Old Yu was nowhere to be seen.
Dou Yan's suspicion grew, and she instructed her father, "Stop, stop."
Father brought the swing to a halt, laughing. "So our Shouyuan turns out to be a scaredy-cat."
Dou Chi argued with him, but just as her feet touched the ground, Old Yu came running over, pale-faced and gasping for breath.
"Seventh Master," she said, tears brimming and her eyes red, looking ready to burst into sobs, "Seventh Madam, she... Seventh Madam, she...She hanged herself!"
"What did you say?" Father's eyes went wide, the smile freezing on his face. "Who? Who hanged herself?"
"Seventh Madam, Seventh Madam..." Old Yu wept, her legs going weak beneath her, and she dropped to her knees. "Seventh Madam has hanged herself..."
Dou Huaiying looked about him in bewilderment.
Only when he saw his daughter standing beside him, motionless as though struck by a spell of paralysis, did a faint sense of reality come to him.
"How can this be... she was perfectly fine just now..." he murmured, his tall frame suddenly seeming to shrivel by several inches, his face as gray as gold leaf, his lips bloodless, trembling without cease.
Dou Yan had lost all power of speech; in her mind ten thousand horses galloped, thundering on without pause.
Why did her mother still have to die?
Had not Wang Shuying become a concubine?
Even if she bore a son, he would only be the eldest son of a concubine...
Why did her mother still have to die?
Then what meaning was there in her return?
Dou Yan pressed her lips together stubbornly, her small hands clenched tightly into fists.
The spring sunlight, gentle and warm, fell quietly on the two figures, one large and one small, as still as clay statues; only the swing still swayed without rest, drawing several colored butterflies to dance around it in circles, vying in beauty.
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Dou Yan knelt before the spirit tablet in a robe of coarse hemp mourning garb, her expression dull, mechanically kowtowing and returning salutes to the sound of the ritual chants.
Her mother had died by hanging herself, which did not count as a full span of fortune and long life; and with elders still living, the rites could be conducted for no more than five times seven, thirty-five days.
There was no one to manage the household, so Grandfather asked Third Uncle and Third Aunt to help arrange her mother's funeral, and even brought out the nanmu coffin he had prepared for himself and gave it to her mother.