Peony

IX

IN THE NINTH MOON month, at a time when heat was gone and cold not yet come, the day of David’s marriage was set. It was the thirty-third day after Leah’s death, and the sod upon her grave was still green.

Thus David saw it when he first went to look upon that grave. He had acquiesced by silence when his father told him that the wedding had been decided upon and he had been silent when he heard that exchange of gifts had been made.

“Does this please you, my son?” Ezra had asked at last.

“Yes, Father, if it pleases you and my mother,” David had answered. He had recovered from his wound, but it had left a scar across his forehead that would be there until his skull was dust. Though his flesh was healed, his spirit had not recovered. He was listless for many hours of the day, and at night he slept ill, and his old healthy greediness for good food had not returned. All this Peony saw, but she said nothing. She tended him now as she had tended him in the old days when he was a child, and Madame Ezra did not forbid her any more.

“Tell me what will please you, my son,” Ezra said anxiously. He put his big hot hand on David’s thin one and David shrank from his father’s touch. He felt his father too eager and too pressing, overanxious and excessively hearty. His strength was not equal yet to meet his father’s love.

“I must marry, I know,” David said.

“You need not — you need not,” Ezra said. But his face fell.

“Yes, I must,” David said.

“Not if you do not love this daughter of Kung,” Ezra said.

“I do not love anyone yet, perhaps,” David said with a small smile.

Ezra was perturbed indeed. He sat back and put his hands on his knees. “I thought you were writing her poems!” he exclaimed.

“I was — but—” So David said.

“Did you leave off before—” Ezra asked, and could not go on to mention Leah.

“Before Leah died?” David said for him. “No — yes, I left a poem unfinished. That was because I met Leah — in the peach garden.”

“Do you mourn her?” Ezra demanded.

David considered long before he spoke. They were sitting in his father’s room, for Ezra had sent for him to tell him that the betrothal was completed.

“No,” David said at last. “I do not mourn. I wish she had not died — as she did. If she had lived—” He paused again.

Ezra’s hair prickled on his scalp and along his arms and legs. “Would you have wed her?” he demanded when David paused too long.

David shook his head slowly. When he did so he felt the scar upon his head ache. “No,” he said, and then with more vigor he said again, “No, Father, of that be sure. But had Leah lived I would have wed this other one with more joy. Can you understand that?”

Ezra’s jaw dropped and he stared back at his son and shook his head. It was beyond him.

“Poor Father,” David said tenderly. “Why should I trouble you? I will marry, and I will have sons and daughters, and I will do well with my life. After the wedding I will come back to the shop and everything will go as before, but better — much better.”

He rose, put a smile on his face, and bowed to his father and went away. Behind him Ezra sat doubtful for a long time, sighed, and then went to his shop, his underlip thrust out for the rest of the day and his temper bad.

As for David, he was restless and he was so irritable with Peony that she gave up trying to please him and she sat quietly and did her sewing. This was usually embroidery of some sort, but today she was not working on silks. She had a piece of fine white linen in her hands, shaped to the sole of a foot.

David watched her little fingers moving in and out of the cloth, drawing the needle up and down and through, and at last he asked her what she did.

“Your feet are tender from lying in bed,” she replied calmly. “I know that the socks the sewing maids make are painful for you. These I am sewing with flat seams, so that there is no seam inside to tear your skin.”

He did not reply to this but he continued to lounge in his chair and look at her idly. “I am to be married, Peony,” he said suddenly.

She lifted her eyes to look at him, and then her eyelids dropped again to the sewing. “I know,” she said.

“Are you pleased with me now?” he demanded.

“It is not for me to be pleased or displeased,” she said gently.

“You shall stay here, Peony, exactly as you have always,” he went on.

“Thank you,” she said. Then she added, “Young Master.”

He paid no heed to this. “I suppose you will want to marry, too, one day,” he said abruptly.

“When I do, I will tell you,” she replied. All this time her fingers were flying very fast, the needle piercing in and out. He was not thinking of her and well she knew it. His mind was wandering round itself. But she was not prepared for what came next from him.

“I want to go and see where Leah is buried,” he said.

She laid the cloth down upon her knees and looked at him, exasperated with love. “And why on this day do you want to go?” she inquired. “It is ill fortune to link death with life.”

“If I go and see her grave, I shall know she is dead,” he said strangely.

Peony looked at him with concern. “But you know Leah is dead,” she reasoned.

“I keep seeing her,” he replied.

They sat in the room where Leah had died, and Peony remembered this, but she did not wish to recall it to his mind. She had thought many times that David’s rooms should be moved elsewhere in the house, but first he had been too ill to be moved and then when she spoke of it he refused, saying that these had been his rooms since his childhood and he liked them best. Now in the secret place of her thought Peony made up her mind that she would tell Madame Ezra that indeed he must have his married life in other rooms, in larger courts, and these rooms should be sealed or given to visitors.

She folded the cloth and put it into a box inlaid with ivory where she kept her sewing things. “If you wish to go and see that grave I will go with you,” she said.

“Now?” he asked.

“Now,” she agreed.

So it happened that on this day, a mild still day in the autumn, David rode in his mule cart outside the city wall to the place where Leah was buried. It was a quiet place not far from the riverbank, and not far too from the synagogue. He knew it well, for here his grandparents and his ancestors were buried among many others of the Jews who had died during the centuries of their sojourn here. The graves were tall, like Chinese graves, and the marking stones were small.

To Leah’s grave Peony led him, for she knew where it was. She had not come here to the funeral, since she had stayed behind with David, but Wang Ma had told her that Leah’s grave lay to the east, away from the river and beside her mother’s grave.

There they went and David sat down upon the coat that Peony folded on the grass. The place was still, the air damp and cool under a gray sky. Around them the tall tombs stood, but David gazed at Leah’s grave. The earth was fresh beneath the sod that had been placed over it, and the sod had taken good root. A few wild asters of a pale purple were blooming in the grass.

“I cannot feel she is there,” David said at last.

“She is there,” Peony said firmly.

“Do you believe in the spirit?” David asked her.

“I do not think about spirits,” Peony replied. She stood beside him but now she stooped and pressed her palm against his cheek. “Are you chill?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Leave me alone a while,” he commanded.

“I will not,” Peony replied. “It is my duty to stay with you, or I shall be blamed for any ill you have.”

So she stood there beside him, a small straight figure, her face to the grave. But her eyes went beyond it. Over the low wall she saw fields and villages, and beyond them the flat bright surface of the river, and the sail of a boat hanging against a mast. What was in David’s mind she did not know, but she would not yield him up to Leah’s spirit. She did believe deeply in spirits, and she knew that the spirit of the dead clings always to the living. With all the strength of her inner being she now opposed Leah’s spirit.

Stay in your grave, she said silently, and she opposed her will to Leah’s will. You have lost him and you shall not harm him any more.

So she held herself hard against every memory of Leah and all that Leah had meant, and at last David sighed and rose to his feet.

“She is dead,” he said sadly.

“Let me put this coat on you,” Peony said. “Your flesh is cold.”

He shivered. “I am cold — let us go home quickly.”

“Yes — yes,” she agreed, and she hastened him to the mule cart, and when they were driven over the rough cobblestone road to the gate she hurried him out of the cart and into his rooms and she made him go to bed and she fetched a hot stone for his feet and hot broth for him to drink and she sat beside him until he slept. Then she went to Madame Ezra and told her faithfully what had happened. Madame Ezra listened, her dark and tragic eyes fixed on Peony’s face, and Peony braced herself, prepared herself for temper. But Madame Ezra was not angry. She heard, she sighed, and then she said quietly, “Now that he has seen the grave, we will forget the past and prepare for the future.”

It was the first time in all her life that Peony had heard such words from Madame Ezra, to whom the past had always been most dear, and she pitied this older woman and felt a new love for her. “My dear mistress,” she said gently, “I promise you that the future will be happy for you, too.”

Madame Ezra shook her head and two tears fell out of her eyes. “If God wills,” she murmured.

Peony bowed and did not answer this, but as she went away to her own bed she thought to herself that gods had little indeed to do with mortal happiness.

The day of David’s wedding dawned clear and cold. The day stood alone in the calendar of early winter. It was near no feast day, and there were no memories about it. It was simply a day chosen by the geomancer under Kung Chen’s direction, a lucky day when the horoscopes of the man and woman met under a fortunate star.

Since David was young, since his strength and health had returned to him fully, since his heart was restless and eager to live again, he rose with some excitement and even with joy. He had allowed himself to become possessed gradually with the thought of the pretty girl coming now to be his wife. It was inevitable, he told himself. Even had his mother wished to put another daughter of their people in Leah’s place, there was no other. Among their people the poor were more than the rich, and there was no family to match the House of Ezra. With all her zeal, he knew his mother was too prudent to bring into the house a daughter-in-law with many poor and greedy kinsfolk. If not a Leah, then why not the pretty girl he had seen and knew he could love?

Thus thinking, David loosed the cords that had bound his heart and he welcomed his marriage day.

Never had Peony found him so fanciful and so willful. He rose early and he washed himself in three baths, the last perfumed, and he was dissatisfied with the way his hair curled, and she must brush it as straight as she could with scented oils. He had wanted every garment new, and these new garments had been made of a clear yellow silk, and now he wished them pale green. The yellow, he said, made him look too dark.

Peony lost her patience at last. “But you yourself ordered the yellow!” she cried.

“You should have advised me against it,” he said in great discontent.

“Be still,” she urged. “There is no time to make others.”

So he put on the yellow, and then he was pleased with it after all, for his Chinese robes were of bright blue, and the yellow under-linings were pleasant enough. Over the brocaded blue satin he wore a black velvet jacket buttoned down the front with jade buttons. That his little bride be not frightened, David had chosen to wear Chinese garments altogether for this day, and upon his head he put a round black satin cap and on its top was a round red button.

When all was finished he stood up before Peony for her inspection, and when she saw him there, tall and smiling, his head high, his feet together, the tears swam up into her eyes.

He stepped forward quickly and put his arm around her. “Peony!” he cried softly. “Why do you weep?”

She leaned her cheek for one moment against him. Then she laughed and slipped out of his arm. “You are too beautiful!” she declared. She made herself very busy. “Let me put your collar straight. Have you rubbed musk on your palms as I bade you? David, you will be very happy — I know it — I feel it in my heart!”

“But are you happy?” he insisted.

She turned grave then and she took his hand and put it to her cheek. “I am happy,” she said softly. “Now I know that I shall live in this house — forever and forever, until I die.”

With these words she fled as swiftly as a swallow. But he took her words and considered them. Did she indeed so love him? He was most tender, thinking of her. Peony would demand nothing of him. She could live quite happily here, content with what her life gave her and asking for no stretch of heart or spirit, or for anything that was beyond right and proportion to what she was. He would look after her welfare and keep her with him so long as they lived, not quite his sister, but something more than servant. He would be good to her.

And now his father and mother were coming. He saw them enter the gate, side by side, dressed in their wedding garments. Each had bought new robes, and Ezra’s was of brown satin and Madame Ezra’s was the deep color of purple grapes edged with gold. Ezra had left off his small cap, and Madame Ezra’s gray hair was bare. They came with measured steps, in silence, and he went to meet them and bowed before them. He saw his mother had been weeping, for her eyes were swollen and her lips still quivered, but she did not speak. It was Ezra who said what must be said.

“Are you content, my son?” Ezra asked.

“Well content,” David replied steadily.

He bowed and they bowed to him and then he went with them to the great hall, and there they waited.

Now in another room Wang Ma and Peony waited, too, for the bride. Whispering and peeping at every corner and window were the women servants and the undermaids, and all were expectant and excited. Was the new bride pretty and would she be good to them? Rumors were that she was the prettiest girl in the city, but these were usual rumors before a bride was seen.

At noon, exactly, the bride’s sedan, covered with red satin curtains, arrived at the great gate and a small sedan for Chu Ma and with them panoplied mule carts bringing the bride’s family and their attendants. The sedan was carried into the courts and thence into the place where Peony and Wang Ma waited. Chu Ma came out of her sedan first. But Peony herself, with a begging word, opened the curtains of the bride’s sedan and offered her arm to the bride.

From all around the court sighs and exclamations rose into the air.

“Ah, she is very pretty!”

“Ah, it is all true!”

“Look at her great eyes!”

“Her little feet—”

If the bride heard, she made no sign. She stepped daintily into the doorway, one hand on Peony’s arm and the other on Chu Ma’s.

“Carefully, my mistress!” Chu Ma said in a loud voice. She considered it beneath her to notice any other servants, and she went ahead to smooth the cushion on the chair set for the bride and to feel if it were soft enough and she called imperiously, “Where is the tea? Is it the best? My mistress drinks only what is brewed from the leaves plucked before the rains!”

But Peony had all prepared, and after the little bride had sat a while she grew curious, and since only women were there she put aside her veil. She looked about the room with her big black eyes. “Is this to be my room?” she inquired in her high sweet voice.

“Hush!” Chu Ma said. She pursed her lips. “Brides are not to speak — I told you, you naughty child!”

“I will speak,” the little bride said willfully. “Besides, you said only if there was a man in the room.”

Everyone laughed at this and she laughed, too. Then she saw Peony standing near. “I am glad you are in this house!” she exclaimed. “You are no older than I, are you?”

“I am eighteen, my lady,” Peony said.

“So am I,” the bride said, and clapped her hands, and everybody laughed again. Then she leaned forward to Peony. “Tell me — is his mother very strange?”

Peony shook her head and put her hand over her mouth to hide her smiles.

“But she is foreign?” Kueilan insisted.

“Yes — but not as much as she was,” Peony said.

Madame Ezra had indeed changed very much. She had grown silent and she did not always put her will first. When Leah died, something died in her, too. This all had perceived, without understanding what it was. But Peony knew.

Now there were footsteps in the court. They looked up and there stood David. At once there was confusion, for this was not the time for him to appear.

Chu Ma cried out in alarm, “Your veil, little one!”

But Kueilan did not put up her hand to her veil. Instead she looked at David and he at her. All in the room were astounded at what they saw was happening and they took it to be a foreign custom.

“I know I do what may be considered wrong,” David said to Kueilan very gently. He looked at her without shame, and indeed with the greatest pleasure. She did not reply but she gazed back at him as though she forgot that she should drop her eyes. They looked at each other, and then she said in a small breathless voice, “I think it is not wrong!”

“Then we agree,” David answered, and after a long look more, he bowed and went away. When he was gone Kueilan sat smiling like a little goddess and heard not one word of Chu Ma’s scolding or the smothered laughter from the walls. She let Chu Ma drop her veil and she sat behind it, her eyes bright and her mouth demure.

But Chu Ma continued to scold and she said in distraction, “It is not well for the man to see the woman too early — it brings ill luck to the marriage.”

No one gave her heed, for Peony now hastened the wedding. “Let me lead you to the great hall,” she said to the bride, and the little figure in the stiff embroidered robes of scarlet satin rose and leaned on her arm and Chu Ma went on the other side, and all followed. In the great hall Kung Chen waited with his wife and his sons by his side. Across the room Ezra and Madame Ezra and Kao Lien stood alone. There had been some talk of the Rabbi’s being present, but this morning when Ezra went to see the old man in the rooms where he lived in this house, he found him so dazed and befuddled that he feared to bring him out before guests, and he had left him there under the care of Old Eli, who had been brought here as his servant. As for that Aaron, none had heard of him yet.

The family of Kung missed neither the Rabbi nor his son. They watched the entrance of their child with feelings various and natural to them. The sons were dubious for their sister, but the younger son especially so. The eldest son shared with his father the prudence of business and unity within the nation. Through this little sister the House of Ezra ceased by so much to be foreign, and since Ezra was known as a kind good man, and very rich besides, it was enough. Madame Kung was serene, never exerting herself to worry or overmuch thought, and she saw that the child looked as she should and thought that the marriage was good enough for a third daughter, although she was secretly pleased that the two elder girls were well married to wealthy Chinese families. She held back a yawn, stared at Madame Ezra, and pitied her for being so tall and having so high a nose.

Only Kung Chen held within himself the feelings of love and doubt and tenderness that made him a father. His Little Three! She had grown up in his house and he had paid her no more heed than he had any of his daughters, but now as she tripped with tiny slow steps into the room, he remembered how rosy and laughing she had been as a baby, and how seldom she had cried, and how when she began to walk she had tremendous little tantrums, stamping her feet and clenching her fists, and how he always laughed at her until she gave up being so angry. He remembered that once she had fallen into the fish pond and he had lifted her out and let her cry against his shoulder, wetting him through from her dripping clothes, and how he had bought her a stick of candied crab apples to cheer her again and she came back with fresh dry clothes.

“How came you to be in my fish pond?” he had asked, laughing.

“The fish pulled me in,” she had insisted, and he had laughed again.

A small endearing creature, a butterfly mind and a kitten soul, but the slender round body was beautiful. He hoped that the young man would be kind and patient, and his eyes stole to look at him. David stood, his eyes now properly turned away from the bride, and Kung Chen searched his face. Handsome, high-spirited, intelligent — yes, and for a young man, perhaps, very kind, he told himself. Then he sighed. Let it be hoped that the young man did not weary of butterflies and kittens! His mind wandered backward to his own wedding day and the pleasure and the hope and then the long slow disappointment. But he had had children, and he had learned to understand that life is made up of everything and not of a single love. It was enough, perhaps, if the man was kind and the woman pretty.

Now Kao Lien stepped forward as the common friend who was to conduct the wedding, and he called the directions to the young couple. Under his command they bowed in turn to the two families and then to the script upon the wall that took the place in this house of ancestral tablets, and they drank the mingled wine and broke the single loaf. The rites were mixed, based upon the Chinese, but compromised, and like no others.

They were short and soon done, and then the bride was set in her seat where she could be seen, and where all could remark on her, but she must not look up or speak or seem to heed anyone. Nor could David in decency heed her, but he did look at her secretly and his blood began to rise. She was very beautiful indeed. Behind the strands of her bead veil the lines of her little face were soft and lovely, and her mouth was red. He pitied her that she must sit so long under the heavy headdress, laden with gold and silver ornaments, and he promised himself that tonight when he lifted it off he would soothe her and ask if her head ached. Then others saw his looks and began to tease him for impatience and he was ashamed to look any more and he let himself be led away to games of wine drinking and to the eating of many delicacies.

The great gates were thrown open to the streets and all who wished could come in and be fed at the tables that were set up in every court, and hundreds came in to eat greedily and with loud professions of thanks. Ezra, coming and going, saw big bowls of pork meats among the fish and beef and fowl, but he said nothing. There was mutton, too, for the Mohammedans, and let each, he told himself, eat according to his own religion.

So went that wedding day with feasting and music and laughter. Kung Chen and Ezra pledged themselves and their grandsons in wine again and again, and Madame Ezra invited Madame Kung. These two ladies met today for the first time and each found the other strange and hard to talk with, and yet each was determined to do her best. Madame Kung thought privately that Madame Ezra was too firm for a woman and she hoped that her temper was not high. But she granted that Madame Ezra tried very much to be pleasant to her, and although the day was tedious for these two ladies, somehow it passed.

When night was come and the young pair had been ushered to their door, then all farewells were said and the house grew quiet again. It was very quiet everywhere. The servants were weary and full of feast food and they fell asleep quickly. Wang Ma groaned once or twice on her bed. When Old Wang asked her if she suffered somewhere she said, “Only in my belly. I ate three times too much of that sweet and sour carp.”

“As for me, I eat as much as I like and I dare my belly to say anything,” Old Wang replied.

“Oh, doubtless you are wonderful,” Wang Ma retorted bitterly. But Old Wang was already asleep.

Peony’s room was very quiet. She had left the company early and had gone into the marriage chamber. She had already put there all the last small touches, the flowers in the vases, the fresh candles and the silver water pipes, a dish of little cakes, hot tea, a plate of late autumn peaches, rosy yellow. She had perfumed the curtains of the bed with musk and had laid a velvet mat upon the footstool before the high bed. Now when she could think of nothing more, she lit the candles and stood looking about the room. There was no repining in her heart. No, she knew what her fate was and what she was born to be, and she was grateful that her life was here, and that into this room she could come every day, though it was only to serve.

Silence stayed in the room when she was gone. Chu Ma broke it for a few minutes when, puffing and anxious, she brought in the little bride. But it was not proper for her to stay, for the bridegroom was coming.

“Sit down, little one,” she whispered gustily to the bride. “When he comes in do not look up. Let him lift the veil, but do not look up. When he bids you look up, or he puts his hand under your chin, or if he stands waiting, then look up slowly — as I taught you. The eyelashes are to be raised last, and very slowly, little one. Oh, Heaven help my child!”

Chu Ma began to sob and wipe her eyes on her sleeves. But the bride would have none of this. She stamped her foot and gave her old nurse a push. “Go away, stupid,” she said too clearly, and Chu Ma’s tears dried at once, and her pity went with them.

“You naughty little one!” she cried under her breath. “I hope he has the strength to beat you.” And rolling her eyes and pursing her lips, she bustled away.

Silent the room was when David came in. He waited until the last peal of laughter had become only an echo behind the closed door. Then he turned to his little bride. She sat upon the bed between the parted curtains, her feet together on the footstool, her hands clasped upon her lap, and the veil still hung over her face. Slowly and in silence he crossed the room and lifted the headdress from her head and set it on the table. He stood beside her hesitating, his heart beating fast.

“Does your head ache?” he asked gently.

She did not lift her face. “Yes — a little.” Her voice was small and sweet.

He stood, and she waited, steadfastly looking down at his feet. Now that she was alone she was frightened, after all, and she obeyed Chu Ma carefully. But if he did not touch her or speak to bid her look up, had she courage enough of her own to lift her head? And when, if she did, should she look at him?

Before she could answer herself, he stooped and took her face between his hands.

“Let us not talk tonight,” he said. “There will be time for talk tomorrow — and in all the days to come.”

“Yes,” she murmured. He felt her cheeks glow warm between his palms.

“We will be happy,” he whispered.

“We will be happy,” she echoed.

The night went on in silence until after midnight. Then Ezra was wakened by the sound of someone sobbing. He had eaten so much and had drunk so well that he had dropped into bottomless sleep the moment he laid himself in his bed. Now it seemed to him that he was being drawn up out of peace by something sorrowful and full of pain. He woke groaning and was not able for a moment to know what he heard. Then he knew the sound. Naomi was sobbing! To comfort her he had slept near her that night. He staggered out of his bed and went into the next room, where her bed was. The darkness was throbbing with the sound of her low sobs.

“Naomi!” he cried, and he fumbled for the bed. “What is the matter with you?”

She did not answer and she went on sobbing. He felt his way to the table and lit the candle. The light fell on her distraught face. It was hard for him to believe that this was the handsome woman who had done her duty so bravely at their son’s wedding.

“Naomi, are you ill?” he cried.

“No,” she gasped. “No — but I–I am thinking of — of all that is over! Oh, I wish I were dead! You wish I were dead, too, Ezra — I know! You want to forget everything.”

He sat down on the bed beside her and he took her hand and began to stroke it patiently. He knew somehow that this was but the first of many nights when he must sit beside her in love and patience, waiting for her sorrow to pass.

“Now, Naomi,” he said drowsily, “you know we are going to be so happy. David will have children — think of this house full of our grandchildren.”

She turned her face away, refusing his comfort. “I have always promised myself — that when I died — I would be buried in our promised land.”

“So that is what you are really weeping for this time!” Ezra exclaimed. Then he remembered patience. “Well, dear wife, shall I make you a promise? If you wish, I will promise that when you die, we will take your body to the promised land. I will manage it somehow.”

She lay silent for a while. “But will you stay with me?” she asked.

Ezra sighed. “Ah, Naomi, you want your way, and you will not let me have mine! No, dear soul, I will come home alone and here I will die and be buried — here where my fathers lie, and where my children are.”

Madame Ezra wept again. “But Ezra, you are a Jew!”

“For that very reason,” he answered steadily. “Here even the soil is kind.”

And he continued to stroke her hand in love and patience.

The deepest silence of all was in Peony’s room. She knew when she laid herself upon her bed that she could not sleep. Through this wedding night she would lie wakeful, her spirit in that other room, hovering over David. But she made all her usual preparations for sleep, washing herself carefully, perfuming her body, cleansing her teeth, brushing her hair, and putting on fresh garments for the night. All day she had been unable to eat, and had made the pretense of being too busy. Now, her head upon her satin pillow, she let herself remember every detail. She could think of nothing that went wrong and for this she praised herself without shame. Every dish was hot or cold in its proper way, and the wines were heated to the right degree and no more. Silver and pewter were bright and ivory was clear and wood was clean polished and even behind a door there was no dust. At the exact moment when the little bride was weary she had seen it and had secretly brought her a bowl of hot soup with rice in it and had managed that none see her eat it. This she knew: that her happiness depended on winning the heart of David’s wife. Her new mistress must learn to love her and lean on her. Yes, and far more, she must stand between husband and wife, and bring them together. By no word or deed must she separate them, for in their happiness lay her own safety — in their happiness, and in their need of her.

For this Peony was too shrewd not to see clearly how the future could lie. She knew the measure of the woman, how high, how wide, how small, and she knew David as she knew her own soul. These two would need her often to mend the fabric of their marriage, but she must never let them know she knew their need.

So she lay thinking as the hours passed, thinking and trying to keep herself from seeing with her mind’s eye that other room where consummation was. Not tonight was her care, she told herself — not tonight or the many nights to come, not one act or many acts, but the whole, the lives of all in relation to the one life she held most dear.

This she was able to say to herself for many hours, as she lay and gazed steadfastly into the darkness. Then suddenly she heard the cock crow. The night was over and dawn was near. Her heart let down, and she sighed. Tears crowded under her lids and her throat was full, but she would not let her weeping break.

It is over, she told herself. Now I can sleep.