Chapter 205 — Breaking Out
Purple Streets of Chang'an · Page 1 of 4
While Dou Yan was lost in pleasant visions of the future, the maidservants and old women of the Huai Shu Alley household were discovering that Dou Yan, upon waking, had neither made a great fuss nor raised a clamor; and with Wang Shuying locked away and no one left at the Huai Shu Alley to take charge, she had first soothed her father, then comforted her aunt, and through her words and bearing had made plain her attitude toward the Fifth Lady and the rest, swiftly seizing control of the situation. All at once they had a backbone again, breathed out together in relief, and recovered their former ease. Once Dou Yan had retired, each went about her business—fresh tea was brewed for the ladies in the hall, the rough-work women were led off to sweep up the leftover scraps of firecracker paper, watchers were posted for the night, the bowls and chopsticks were counted and checked... and in a moment everything fell into order.『雅*文*言*情*首*发』
A woman from the kitchen even sent a little maid over to ask Matron Liu, "It's getting late—what sort of night snacks do the ladies and young madams fancy?"
Matron Liu thought of Dou Zhiwei's grave, composed face; Mingche had said that when the sky falls, the tall man holds it up, and it had little to do with her—yet for some reason her heart tightened. What appetite had she for night snacks? She only wanted to hurry back and report the matter to the Second Old Madam and ask her to decide. But since the Fifth Lady was present, she could hardly fail to seek the Fifth Lady's instructions first.
Matters had gone entirely beyond the Fifth Lady's expectations.
By rights, after a calamity of this sort, even if Dou Yan did not threaten to die or make a scene, she ought at least to have wept and wailed. Yet she had not shed a single tear; not only had she quickly accepted that Dou Ming had taken her place in the bridal chair, she had instantly devised a way to deal with it, full of confidence, as though she had been prepared all along.
But she immediately rejected the notion.
Only she herself, the Fifth Lady, and the Second Old Madam knew of this; they could never have told Dou Yan.
Which meant that Dou Yan was born with such calm in the face of danger?
And then there was Dou Huaiying. That his second daughter had been married off in place of the eldest was something he surely could not accept at once, and in his fury he was bound to do something extreme—yet who would have thought he would see through the trick so quickly, and fly into such a passion that he fainted dead away?
Lady Zhao, too, was far more level-headed than she had imagined.
When she heard that Dou Ming had entered the bridal chair in Dou Yan's stead, she had seized Wang Xushi by the collar and threatened to drag her to the authorities, reducing Wang Xushi to a sorry state. Apart from showing great indignation at the very start, her conduct afterward had gradually acquired a sense of measure—clearly she did not wish to blow the matter up before Dou Ming's marriage into the Wei family was finally settled, nor to thrust Dou Yan onto the point of the spear.
The Fifth Lady had a vague feeling that this affair had been somewhat improperly handled, and that it would hardly go as smoothly as she had wished...
Which made it all the more impossible for her to leave the Huai Shu Alley.
Should anything change, she could deal with it in time...
The Fifth Lady turned it over in her mind. Should she tell Dou Yan about the Ji family matter?
With a proud and clever person, speaking from the heart was always more effective than concealment and scheming.
In a consulting tone she said to Matron Liu, "The ladies of the Ji and Wang families seem not to have left, and there's no one here to take charge. Surely we can't just wash our hands of it? We had better stay. Someone will have to go over and pay our respects to the Ji and Wang sides as well."