Chapter 57 — Grandfather (Bonus Update for 300 Pink Votes)
Purple Streets of Chang'an · Page 1 of 4
Grandfather was watching the opera with the newly arrived Magistrate Lu of Zhending County, the servants having brought up such delicacies as mandarin-orange cakes and Fengcheng preserved meats. He had meant to take a mandarin-orange cake, but his eyes were fixed so intently on the stage that he seized a salted peanut and popped it into his mouth; by the time he realized his mistake, the peanut had lodged in his throat, and he coughed without cease. Those beside him hurriedly offered tea to ease his throat, but the more he drank, the harder he coughed.
Dou Yan sat at Dou Duo's bedside, gazing at her unconscious grandfather, unable to say whether what she felt was sorrow or a dull, empty ache.
In her last life, she had not returned to the Western Dou until after Grandfather was laid in his coffin. By then it was already the eighth month, and she was still a muddled child; newly arrived at the Eastern residence, flustered, frightened, ill at ease—how could she have thought to ask after the cause of her grandfather's death?
No wonder, then, that in this life Grandfather, after three months of coma, would die?
Her father soon hurried back from the capital, and with him came Dou Ming.
She was greatly changed from her days at the Eastern Dou. She seemed much livelier, her voice louder. No sooner had she stepped from the carriage than she called out loudly to Gao Sheng: "I've brought piles of things back for Sister Yi and Sister Shu and the rest—mind you're careful, take everything to my room."
Her room?
And where was her room?
The warm chamber on the Second Dowager's side? Or the eastern wing that Wang Shuying had arranged for her?
The warm chamber was in the Eastern residence. The eastern wing—she had not spent a single day in it.
Gao Sheng looked rather put out.
Dou Ming had already begun to shout in displeasure: "You dog of a servant, mind I don't tell Father to sell you off."
Dou Yan closed her eyes.
Matters had returned, beyond any reversing, to their former course.
She stepped out and rebuked Dou Ming: "Gao Sheng serves Father. Even if he were at fault, it is not for you to deal with him. If you dare say such a thing again, I'll have you dragged off to the firewood shed and shut up there for three days."
Dou Ming had been in awe of this somewhat distant elder sister since childhood; at these words her expression faltered, but she quickly mastered her fear and said, "I—I didn't mean anything by it." Her voice trailed off; in the end she dared not talk back to Dou Yan.
Dou Yaocheng had been a man much given to enjoyment, and early on had bought a three-courtyard house in a lane beside Yunqi Temple in the capital. Small though it was, it was decked out in silks and flowers, its furnishings and vessels all exquisite; it was a most comfortable place to live.
Blood is a fearful thing. Whether Dou Duo or Dou Huaiying, all were like their ancestor Dou Yaocheng, fond of comfort.
While in the capital, Dou Huaiying stayed there. Dou Ming was in the capital too, but it was inconvenient for him to bring a child along alone. What was more, when Lady Wang Xu saw Dou Ming's dull-witted air and heard her daughter's account, and learned that Dou Bingheng and her own husband did not get along, she was sure the Eastern Dou meant to use this to put the Western Dou down, and her heart ached beyond bearing. So when Dou Ming came to the capital, Lady Wang Xu cherished her like the apple of her eye; her own grandsons were all thrust aside, and she doted only on this granddaughter. Dou Huaiying went to see Dou Ming a few times, but finding her rosy-cheeked and surrounded by a great press of maids and serving women who would not leave her for a moment, and that she had grown somewhat distant from him, he counted himself well rid of the trouble. One lived in the Yunqi Temple lane, the other in the Liuye Lane, and his contact with Dou Ming was not much.