Chapter 4 She Met Her Mother

“Madam Pang was so angry at that time! How fabulous!” Song Yixiao leaned against her cousin, Wei Ge’s arms obediently and pretended to be sleeping, hearing in secret the servant of the Wei Family talking about how Madam Cao settled with the Song Family, “Then she summoned Ms. Wu to confront. Just guess what she said.”

“What else could she say? Of course she refused to acknowledge!” Wei Ge shouted with excitement, “That old cat even claimed that we plotted to sell Yixiao. What else can’t they do? Fortunately, the facts are all there. She can never make a false countercharge!”

“Voice down! Yixiao is still sleeping!” Her elder sister Wei Ning lowered her voice to remind her and meanwhile turned around to have a guess in spirits, “Did she just say that she had searched for a long time and yet failed? Then they could execute the stalling tactics?”

The servant was quite articulate, “If it were not for the elderly lady, the Song Family would do as you two ladies just said! However, how could Madam Cao just let go of them so easily? She insisted on the old cat Madam Pang’s dragging Ms. Wu to the hall.”

“What did she say?” Wei Ge and Wei Ning asked anxiously.

“At first, she just refused to acknowledge, saying that it was Lady Yixiao’s foster nurse, Ms. Zhao who shirked the duty and made her bring Lady Yixiao out!” The servant said with dignity, “Afterwards, the elder lady identified the loophole of her words and then ordered to beat her up so that she couldn’t help confessing. According to her, she learned that Lady Yixiao asked Ms. Zhao to impawn a pair of bracelets that Princess Consort Wei gave her before for 500 taels of silver in order to buy a decent birthday gift for Master Song. Hence, Ms. Wu cast her eyes on the money. On the day when Lady Yixiao went out, she managed to send away Ms. Zhao and insisted on accompanying her ladyship out, allowing no one to follow them!”

Wei Ge and Wei Ning said in surprise, “Then she took away Yixiao’s money and then sold her?”

“Ms. Wu said that she only wanted to trick Lady Yixiao into buying a cheap thing so that she could get the 500 taels of silver. Never did she acknowledge that she sold Lady Yixiao or that she was ordered by Madam Liu. She asserted that she was stunned by someone on the halfway. Therefore, she thought Lady Yixiao was abducted by the trafficker so she simply pushed the boat with the current. Then she didn’t go back until the night in case that she returned too early and the trafficker didn’t go far enough!”

“Bah! The Song Family are so heartless!” Wei Ge and Wei Ning were the ladies of the Wei Family, whose marriage matters were affected by the remarriage of Wei Mengying. They were disgruntled against Wei Mengying and Song Yixiao before, but now they couldn’t help feeling surprised and sympathetic about their cousin’s experience, “Even a cat or a dog is missing, they must send someone to look for it! Yixiao is the eldest legitimate daughter of their family! How could they just announce her death of a sudden illness! Are they human beings?!”

“So the elder lady is absolutely right! Madam Pang is just a beast!”

Listening to her cousins and the servants’ censure on the Song Family, Song Yixiao smiled mockingly, “The imperial capital is only this big. I wouldn’t believe that the Wei Family and mother didn’t know how miserable I was and how I felt when being drowned! Yet, who would care about me then?”

“Now I have helped the Wei Family get the goods on the Song Family by selling myself so they treat me in a completely different way!”

She couldn’t help thinking in disappointment, “Jostling and joyous, the whole world comes after profit; racing and rioting, after profit the whole world goes. What a golden saying!”

While she was in a daze, a servant suddenly came, “Where is Lady Yixiao? Princess Consort Wei has come back, who is weeping beside Madam Cao! Take Lady Yixiao there now in case that Princess Consort Wei is too worried!”

Wei Ge hastened to wake Song Yixiao up and the maids came to wash her face and hands. Then they helped do her clothes before the two cousins brought her to the back hall, each of them holding either of her hands.

Before they entered the back hall, they heard a woman weep in sorrow, “My poor girl! I am so sorry for her! I never expected that the Song Family would hurt their own child…”

Next was the sobbing reprehension of Madam Cao, “You are such a silly girl! Why don’t think about what kind of life you used to live in the Song Family? For the sake of Yixiao, you didn’t dare to disclose their rascality! Now you see. They go even further and hurt Yixiao even though you say nothing about their evildoings. If she didn’t meet a good person, she would be doomed!”

Song Yixiao heard that and smiled, “Their tacit conversation just justify that my mother was also often beaten in the Song Family.”

A wealthy and influential family had its own rules. No matter how dissatisfying the wife was, there wouldn’t be a big problem to ground her, force her to transcribe books, arrange concubines for her husband or make her days difficult. However, beating her was the worst, which would easily serve as an excuse for her maiden family to scold the husband’s family and an ineffaceable evidence.

People wouldn’t believe the censure of Madam Cao and Wei Mengying. After all, Madam Pang was from a decent official family and her husband used to work as Grand Secretariat of the Hanlin Academy. How could they ruin the tacit understanding?

However, now the news that Madam Pang maltreated her eldest legitimate granddaughter had been widespread in the city. Since she was so heartless to her granddaughter, it was not strange at all that she would go after her daughter-in-law!

“It is not a good thing that my own mother is too scheming. When mother was still in the Song Family, father only loved her, let alone any concubine. Although my grandmother dislikes me because I am a girl, without the provocation of my stepmother, she would not make trouble me on purpose.” Song Yixiao walked across the threshold. Looking at her mother, Wei Mengying, who was familiar and yet strange to her, her memories of the previous life and this life just flooded in. She shed tears with flagging interest, “I have been loved by my parents for the past eight years and yet grown so stupidly innocent. Since my mother left the Song Family, I have been ill-treated, which is not surprising at all.”

She used to hate her mother but when it was her time to get married and escape from the Song Family, she started to understand Wei Mengying’s situation.

What really upset her was her mother’s indifference to her. In the previous life, before she was drowned for being slandered, her foster nurse Ms. Zhao managed to go to Prince of Hengshan’s residence for help, hoping that Wei Mengying who had given birth to three children for Prince of Hengshan to do a favor for Song Yixiao. Ms. Zhao gave plenty of kowtows so hard before the prince’s residence that even her forehead bled heavily. However, Wei Mengying only replied that she didn’t feel like bothering her about any trivial matter for not feeling well.

By now Song Yixiao still didn’t want to recall the feeling when she saw Ms. Zhao staggered back with her hand covering her head. How could a mother refer to the issue related to her daughter’s life as a trivial matter?

“It’s no use relying on anyone. One must live on herself!” This was the greatest lesson that Song Yixiao had learnt from her previous life and this life.

Therefore, faced with the sorrow of her mother, Song Yixiao was crying and yet felt disgruntled. After crying for a while, she directly closed her eyes and pretended that she was sleeping.

Finally, Wei Mengying’s show of motherlove was ended. Ordered by Madam Cao, she said in a lower voice, “Bring her to my room…”