Chapter 19 — The Marriage

Mother was much worried about her family's finances; Dou Fan, however, cracked sugar-roasted chestnuts and ate them with an air of unconcern.

In the last life, even after Mother hanged herself, Uncle had still passed the imperial examination. In this life everything was kept from him, and he had only to travel light—could he possibly fail to pass? Surely not.

So long as Uncle passed the examination, all those past expenses would naturally be earned back!

These chestnuts must have been stored in a cellar through the winter; they had lost their moisture and were dry as dust from being roasted in sugar, yet something was better than nothing—she was a three-year-old child now, and what could a three-year-old child do? She had an abundance of leisure.

Dou Yan nibbled at the chestnuts in tiny, deliberate bites, letting the crumbs fall all over the ground.

Aunt began to speak with Mother about her marriage: "It was only a verbal agreement, after all. I think you should talk it over with your father-in-law and ask him to find some person of standing to settle the matter with the Wei family."

Dou Yan's chewing paused; only after a long moment did she slowly resume.

Aunt's reasoning was not without merit.

In the last life, after Mother's sudden death, Father had taken Wang Shuying to wife within a hundred days, while Uncle's family had hurried off to his post. Father was wholly devoted to his studies; once the mourning period for Mother was over, he at once sat for the provincial examination, became a juren, and then the following spring sat for the metropolitan examination, became a jinshi, was promoted to Shujishi, and took up observation of affairs in the Ministry of Personnel. By then the Wang family had already moved to the capital. Wang Shuying's mother, Lady Xu, longing for her daughter, granddaughter, and grandson, begged Father to bring them all to the capital for a reunion. Having obtained Grandfather's consent, Father took Wang Shuying, Dou Ming, and Dou Xiao to the capital... and who then still remembered her betrothal to the Wei family?

It was not until Grandfather and Grandmother had died one after the other and she was sent to the capital that Father suddenly realized she had grown into a young woman of marriageable age. Recalling the engagement to the Wei family, he sent men to discuss it with them. But the Wei family hemmed and hawed and never gave a clear answer.

Even now Dou Yan could remember how frightened and unsettled she had been.

With Father alive and well, her uncles of the Eastern Dou could never have taken her in; Uncle was far away in the northwest; and her stepmother had never stinted on her food, clothing, or expenses—yet whenever Wang Shuying's gaze chanced to fall on her, it seemed to carry a trace of something cruel and vicious, like a wolf about to devour its prey, as though she wished to swallow her whole in a single gulp. But look again, and she had already regained her former calm composure, still wearing that appearance of serene nobility.

As the saying goes: whatever is unnatural is monstrous.

She had no idea what Wang Shuying was really scheming.

She lived every day in terror and trembling, afraid that in one unguarded moment catastrophe would be waiting to fall on her head.

Yet before she died, Grandmother had warned her that a woman without a natal family cannot stand firm in her husband's household, and that she must on no account fail to keep up at least the outward show of deference to her stepmother. Obeying Granny Yu's words, she might hate Wang Shuying for driving her mother to her death, yet the rumors that circulated among the maids and serving-women—that her mother was "jealous," "childless," and so on—left her feeling she had no ground on which to hate Wang Shuying. And Wang Shuying was so skilled at putting up a fine front that even if she had spoken out, no one would have believed that Wang Shuying treated her strangely. Her heart was torn between grievance and sorrow, between hesitation and contradiction; her days were like being fried in a pan of boiling oil, and she felt that though the world was vast, there was no place in it for her.

So when she first heard that while Mother lived she had arranged a betrothal for her, she had actually felt a joy as though she had "escaped with her life," and wished she could be married into that family at once.

This too was the main reason that, when she learned Dou Ming's marriage had fallen through and Dou Ming had sworn to marry into one of the capital's great families to wipe away her shame, and that Wang Shuying had set her sights on Wei Fan, new grievances and old hatreds tangled together, and from that moment she and Wang Shuying became irreconcilable foes.

If she had not contrived back then to discover her mother-in-law's whereabouts and let the woman "chance upon" her, it was still uncertain whether the Wei family would have honored the engagement.

Had she not stirred her mother-in-law's old affections, then even if the Wei family had been willing to ally with the Dou, the bride sent over would most likely have been Dou Ming and not her!

Dou Yan's chewing slowed once more.

In the last life she had been driven to it by circumstance—but must she go on entangling herself with Wei Fan in this one too?

She thought of how, when she had newly married into the Wei family, it was the twelfth month and the New Year was close at hand. To please her mother-in-law and also to silence Wei Wan's tongue, she had taken it upon herself to help her mother-in-law manage the New Year preparations in the Wei household. She had no experience, and the maids and serving-women who had come as her dowry had all been assigned at the last moment by Wang Shuying; they were neither willing to help nor even vaguely familiar to her. She did not know she was with child, and in the end the strain brought on a miscarriage.

That was her first child.

Wang Shuying sent Dou Ming to visit her.

And Dou Ming encountered Wei Fan.

The sun was bright that day, and the official-green bed-curtains before the bed shut out the light. She lay listlessly on the nanmu frame-bed in the inner chamber, her face pale and lifeless, like a cloisonné vase left too long on a curio shelf and thick with dust—stiff and dull. And Dou Ming, standing beside the curtain, wore a small jacket of lotus-root-pink Hangzhou silk woven with the pattern of the Four Seasons of Good Fortune; the light in the room fell on the southern-pearl and jade ornaments in her black hair, which gave off a lustrous sheen and set off her brows and eyes like a painting, her person lovely as an autumn flower. Wei Fan stared at her, eyes fixed and unblinking.

That scene cut Dou Yan to the heart.

Though Dou Ming was small and exquisite and gracefully charming, she was not a gentle soul. On the contrary, spoiled by Lady Xu of the Wang family, she was not only proud and arrogant but fierce-tempered, rash in her actions, and wore every one of her feelings plainly on her face. That was precisely why Wang Shuying had been so set on marrying Dou Ming to her own nephew.

She had come that day on purpose, and on purpose had made it so.

She wanted only to let Wei Fan see—since the Wei family had refused to have her, what a beauty Wei Fan had missed!

And Wei Fan did not disappoint Dou Ming's expectations; several times he praised her gentle amiability in her presence.

In those days the sight of Wei Fan had still set her heart pounding like a drum—and that was perhaps why she could not bear it at all?

Dou Yan crunched away at the chestnuts, startling a cry from Zhao Xiuru: "Spit it out quick, that's a rotten chestnut!"

Mother and Aunt were both badly frightened.

"This child, such a greedy little thing!" Mother hastily snatched the chestnut from Dou Yan's hand and held out the tea before her for her to rinse her mouth. "It's as if she'd never eaten a chestnut in her life."