Peony

XII

UPON THAT HOMEWARD JOURNEY David said little indeed to anyone. The pleasure he had taken in the new countryside when they were going northward he scarcely felt now. The country was as beautiful as ever, and perhaps more beautiful, for every tree and field was at its ripest growth. Wheat had been harvested, and, in the north, sorghum corn stood high. This was the season for banditry, for the corn was so tall that robbers easily hid in it, and he was uneasy until they reached the canal. But good fortune was with them, for though they heard of highwaymen before them, none came near on the days when they passed.

The reason for this was that through some stupidity the robbers had not known that the governor of the province was traveling to the capital and they had taken him to be a common rich man. When his soldiers sprang at them they were so confounded that after a short battle they withdrew in dismay and hid in their caves and hills for a few days. It was held a crime to attack a governor or some high official, and the king of the bandits sent tribute quickly to the governor and cursed himself heartily for molesting so august a personage, and he promised that he would cut off the heads of those who had led the attack, and deliver them to the governor on any day he was ready to receive them. To this the governor replied that the men were to be spared. He set a punishment, nevertheless, that for a month there was to be no robbery whatever along the roads from the capital to the river. Within this month by luck David and his family went southward to the river and took a junk homeward. River pirates there were, but David bade the boatmen use the same flags that he had used before, which had on them the name of the Imperial Court, and under these they were safe.

The journey was slow, for in midsummer the winds are soft and mild, and as they went westward the current of the river was against the travelers. There was time for David to be alone with his thoughts, and he was much alone on the decks, gazing at the slowly moving countryside on either side of the junk. The sun was hot and the boatmen put up a wide awning to shade him from the sun, and beneath it he sat on cushions, in comfort as to body but much disturbed in his mind. This disturbance made him very gentle toward his children and his wife, and to them he gave more heed than usual, listening to their chatter, and courteous to any whim that Kueilan made known. He had through the years allowed the habit of impatience with her to grow upon him somewhat, but now he curbed it, and he answered her gently, even when what she said was foolish. To his sons he made endless explanations in answer to their many questions, and sometimes he even held the end of the sash around his youngest son’s waist, so that the child would not fall into the water. Altogether David was unlike his usual self.

Peony perceived all this, and then with pain she discovered that this new kindness was not given to her. David avoided her, and this she saw plainly as the days went by in the enforced closeness of the junk. He took care not to be alone with her, and if she came out on the deck in the evening, after her charges were ready for the night, David was never there, although the moonlight was splendid upon the river. Day after day went by but David never spoke to her alone, and seldom spoke to her at all except to give her a command concerning his sons or their mother. Peony was wounded to the heart at first, and she thought this change in him must be because it was for her sake he had left the capital when he would have liked to stay longer. She sighed to believe that he was like other men in this, that he loved least that one for whom he must sacrifice. She began to blame herself that she had allowed him to give up anything for her and pride crept into her with despair, and she planned that if this change stayed in him, she would keep to herself, and even perhaps leave his house. But where would she go? She had no answer to this question. I must still stay hidden in his house like the mice and the crickets, she told herself.

If David noticed her silence and her pride, he made no sign. The days went one after the other through the midsummer and they drew near to their home. He sent runners ahead to tell his father that if there were winds they would reach home within seven days, and if winds delayed or if a summer storm fell, it would be at most as many as seven days longer. He was anxious to get home before the late summer season of storms, when all river craft must be ready to seek harbor.

The winds were with them for a few days and they were towed the rest of the journey, and at the end of the tenth day they saw the city walls upon the plains. All were glad to see the shores they knew so well, and Ezra was at the riverbank to meet them, and so were Kung Chen and his sons, and there were mule carts and sedans and carriers.

“Well, my son!” Ezra cried with gladness. He took David into his arms and pressed his cheek against his tall son’s shoulder. “I did not expect you for another half year, but how heartily I welcome you!”

Kung Chen shook his hands clasped together and nodded his head and greeted his daughter and her children and acknowledged Peony, and so they got into carts and chairs and went homeward. The city officials had ordered firecrackers to be lighted at the city gate and at the gate of Ezra’s house. Old Wang and Wang Ma stood holding many feet of firecrackers in strings and they lit them, and thus in the midst of din and rejoicing the family was reunited.

How glad was Peony to be safe inside these gates again! “Everything is the same,” she murmured to Wang Ma when she had stepped into the courtyard.

“There has been one small death,” Wang Ma said. “Otherwise all is well.”

Now Peony had already missed the voice of Small Dog, but she had taken it that the little beast was sleeping somewhere, for she was old and lazy.

“Not Small Dog!” she exclaimed.

Wang Ma nodded. “The creature pined when you went away and would not eat. I tempted her with meat scraped fine to spare her teeth and I bought fresh pig’s liver for her, but she could eat nothing.”

“I wish I had taken her with me,” Peony cried in sorrow.

“She would have longed for home,” Wang Ma replied. “Either way she was doomed to die.”

Peony said no more but she missed Small Dog exceedingly. When she had settled her mistress and the children in their rooms she went to her own small court and the quiet was too heavy for her to bear. She felt cut off from everyone, and she sat down and wept a while softly, sighing now and then. Small Dog’s cushion was still under the table and she looked at it mournfully and asked herself if she should get another small dog. Dogs were many and could be replaced easily and no one cared whether they lived or died. Yet somehow she did not want any dog except the one she knew and had lost, and she cursed herself that she was so singlehearted.

“I am a fool,” she murmured aloud. “I love too narrowly.” She thought of Small Dog, but now her mind went on and she cursed herself that this same narrowness of heart made her cling to David when another woman would have given him up and chosen a good husband for herself and welcomed her children and been merry even though she could not have the man she loved. But all her cursing could not change her stubborn heart. I must put up with myself as I am, she thought mournfully, and when she had wept for a while she washed her face and brushed her hair and changed her garments and went out to do her duty to her mistress and the children.

David sat late that night with his father. They had dined alone together this first night and had promised to dine tomorrow with Kung Chen. Each had news to give the other. Ezra said he was well, but he looked thin, and David, seeing him freshly now, perceived that his father was growing to be an old man. Ezra’s cheeks were lined under his beard and his left eyelid drooped somewhat. He complained of stiffness in his left side and that his left foot dragged when he walked. Yet his eyes were still bold and bright, and his voice was as loud as ever.

“Did the stiffness come slowly or quickly?” David asked.

“I woke up so one morning two months ago,” Ezra answered. “For a few days my tongue was thick and I could not say my words clear. Wang Ma fetched the physician and he gave me an herb drink and I was better.”

“Father, you must let me help you more,” David said.

To this Ezra replied, “I have already done so, my son. While you were away I made you the head of the business, and from now on you are the one to say yes and no and to plan everything. Kung Chen has done the same with his eldest son. You are the partners and we two old grandfathers will stay at home unless we please to give you advice.”

David was moved and proud, and yet a vague sorrow fell on him. This was the beginning of the end of his father’s life. As he himself came into his prime his father must decline. It was the inevitable march of the generations and none could stop its course, but he told himself that from now until the day his father died he would be always gentle to him and he would defer to his wish in everything.

“I miss your mother, my son,” Ezra said suddenly.

He looked at David and his eyes watered and he brushed his tears away with his fist. The hour was late, the house was still, and the great candles flickered in the summer wind blowing through doors open to the soft darkness in the court.

“We all miss her,” David said quietly. “The house has never been the same house since she went away — for any of us.”

Ezra seemed scarcely to hear him. He leaned back and his thick hands clutched the arms of his chair. “I think about our life together, hers and mine,” he went on. “It was not an easy marriage, my son. She was unyielding — until I learned to know her. I could never deal with her twice the same way. She was a woman of many changes. Sometimes I met anger with anger, and sometimes I met anger with love and again with laughter — I had to choose my weapon. I had to be new to meet her newness. Yet underneath all her change there was a purity unexcelled. The heart of her was goodness. I could trust her. God she never betrayed, and me she could not betray. She was a true wife.”

David did not speak. To him his parents had been merely parents, but now dimly he began to see them as man and woman. He was abashed to think of them thus, to contemplate these two from whom he had sprung as separate from him and leading between them the vigorous and private life of a man and a woman.

“She was never stupid,” Ezra began again. “Well, sometimes that was almost too much, for I saw in how many ways she was more clever than I! When I was young this roused my spleen sometimes, but as I grew older I saw how fortunate I was. Look at Kung Chen! A lonely man, eh, my son? He never speaks to me of his children’s mother, but the few times I have seen her — a bit stupid, eh, David? And he is a fastidious man — he cannot go out and pluck wild flowers along the road. No more could I. When a man has known a woman like your mother — body and soul—” Ezra broke off, sighed, and went on again. “While you were gone, my son, and when Kao Lien left me to go westward with the caravans, I had time to myself, and I remembered all my life with your mother. Much comfort she took away with her when she left me, but here is something strange: I have never been devout, as you well know, David, but while she was in the house I felt all was well with my house before God. She was my conscience — which pricked me sometimes and against which I kicked, but which I valued. Now I feel lost. God is far from me — if there is a God?”

He put this as a question and David did not know how to answer it. He kept his silence.

When he did not speak, Ezra began to speak again. “You and I cannot answer that question. By that much we are no longer Jews, my son. I made my choice, you made yours. Would I go back? Ah, but I am what I am, and did I go back I would make the same choice, and so would you.”

“I am not so sure as you are,” David said now. “I could have been one man — or another. Had Leah lived—” He broke off.

“Had Leah lived,” Ezra repeated. He turned this over in his mind. Then he said, “Had Leah lived, perhaps your mother would be living too. Everything would have been different. But first we would have had to be different.”

“We would not have been here,” David said.

Ezra looked across the table at him surprised. “You mean—”

“We cannot live here among these people and remain separate, Father,” David argued. “In the countries of Europe, yes, for there the peoples force us to be separate from them by persecution. We cling to our own people there because none other will accept us, and we are martyred and glorified by our martyrdom. We have no other country than sorrow. But here, where all are friends to us and receive us eagerly into their blood, what is the reward for remaining apart?”

“Indeed — indeed, it is so,” Ezra said. “All that has happened to us is inevitable.”

“Inevitable,” David agreed.

“And your sons, my grandsons, will proceed still further into this mingling,” Ezra went on.

“It will be so,” David said.

Ezra pondered. “Shall we then disappear?”

David did not reply. It was inevitable, as he himself had said, when people were kind and just to one another, that the walls between them fell and they became one humanity. Yet he could not contemplate the far future when his descendants knew him no more, when perhaps they would have forgotten the very name of Ezra, and when indeed they would be as lost as a handful of sand thrown into the desert or a cupful of water cast into the sea. He gazed down the long line of those who would come from his loins and the loins of his sons and his sons’ sons. He saw the faces turning toward him, and they were the faces of Chinese.

“We grow too mournful,” Ezra said suddenly. “What has been has been, and cannot be avoided. Tell me about your journey, my son.”

So David roused himself and he told his father everything, the beauty of the great northern capital, and how the people looked and how noble their nature was, and what he had eaten and drunk and what all the gaieties were that he had enjoyed and how he had been given an audience before the Western Empress, and he told of the rumors about her, and so telling all he came at last to the reason why they had left the city so suddenly by night, for Peony’s sake.

Ezra listened closely, laughing sometimes and his eyes shining sometimes, and shrewd and careful when David spoke of business. When he heard of Peony, he grew very grave indeed. “What misfortune!” he exclaimed. “The long arm of the Chief Steward can reach anywhere, and we must tell Kung Chen this tomorrow.”

“I could not have done otherwise, Father,” David said.

“No — no.” Ezra hesitated, then he said firmly, “No, my son, no! To be sure, had she been like other women and had she welcomed the chance to go into the palace — well — hm — then, ah, it would have been fortunate for our house. We would have had a friend in the highest quarters. But being what she is — no, certainly not. Yet we must take every opportunity to ward off evil results. It would be a great sacrifice to make only for a woman, if our business were spoiled because of spite at the court. Your mother always said we made too much of Peony.”

At this David felt some sort of heat rise in him, mingled with anger, and to defend himself he spoke coolly. “Well, my father, if I have done unwisely, I must make amends in some other way, for Peony has been like my sister, and I could not put her into that evil steward’s palm at any price. That much I know.”

“As long as she is no more to you than a sister I will not complain,” Ezra said.

This speech was so plain that David was confounded by it. It probed him too deeply, beyond what he himself was willing to know, and he did not answer it. He looked at the candles and saw them guttering and he made excuse to rise and use the snuffers on them.

“It is late!” he exclaimed. “Tomorrow I must be early at the shops, Father, and so I will say good night.”

Wang Ma had been waiting outside the door, and when she heard this she came in with the fresh tea and the rice gruel that Ezra drank before he slept, and so the day was over.

But for David there was no sleep. He did not go to his wife. Instead he stayed in his room, finding there every sign of Peony’s thought for him, the bedquilt folded, the curtains drawn, the teapot hot, his pipe prepared, the candles trimmed. But she herself had gone.

He made himself ready for bed and he put out the candles and parted the curtains and laid himself down. Still he could not sleep. His father’s talk had stirred afresh all that had been in his mind these many weeks on the journey. His mother, Leah, Peony, Kueilan, these four women who had somehow between them shaped his life were shaping him still. He longed to be free of them all, and yet he knew that no man is ever free of the women who have made him what he is. He sighed and tossed and wished for the day when he could return to the shops and the men there who had nothing to do with his heart and his soul.

Peony, too, was restless that night. David had been long with his father, she knew, for Wang Ma told her that the two were talking gravely hour after hour and she dared not go in, even though it was long past midnight. She had waited with Wang Ma, outwardly to keep her company but secretly because she hoped to see David’s face at least as he passed. Yet he had not seen her, and she had not dared to call him. She sat in the dark court outside the range of the mild candlelight flowing through the open door and beyond, hearing their voices, and he passed her so closely that she could have touched him, but she did not put out her hand. Doubtless he had told his father why they had left Peking, and perhaps Ezra had reproached him. Well she knew that danger of trouble from the Chief Steward was not past, even here, and she shrank from being the cause of it.

When David had gone she went to bed herself, and lying alone in the moonless summer night, she considered her plight. Rich folk could be kind, as the Ezra family had always been kind to her, but if one of the lesser ones to whom they were kind should also become a trouble, their hearts could cool quickly. She remembered how she had thought that David loved her, perhaps, and she thought of the look in his eyes sometimes. Then she remembered how cold he had been all these weeks. Doubtless he regrets already what I have compelled him to do, she told herself.

Pride came to her help again, and she decided that at the very first moment he allowed her, she would go to David and tell him that she wished to enter the Buddhist nunnery that stood inside the city gate. There she would be safe from any man, and he could send word somehow to the Chief Steward that she had long been dedicated and only waiting for the journey north to be finished before she became a nun. Inside that quiet haven, where only women lived, she would be safe, and it seemed sweet to her.

The more she thought of this plan, the better she considered it to be, and she held it in her mind for a few days until the first rush of David’s business was over. Yet she dared not be silent long, lest that strong soft hand from the Imperial Palace should bring trouble in its grasp.

On the fifth day she saw David linger after his noon meal as though he were not in haste to return to the shops. Ezra went to sleep on the long couch that in this summer weather was set under the bamboos, and Wang Ma sat by him to keep the flies away. The children slept, the servants slept, and her mistress too was sleeping. Peony had made it her business today to superintend the noon meal, and while the underservants took the dishes away, she handed the bamboo toothpicks to David and she said, “Will you not sleep a while, too? The air is heavy and there are thunderclouds in the south.”

“I will sleep an hour in my own court,” he replied.

Thither she went to set a bamboo couch under an old pine tree there, and while she was spreading a soft mat over it, David came in. He had taken off his robes when he came in and he wore his inner garments of pale green silk.

“All is ready,” Peony said, and she prepared to leave him. The day was so hot that clear little rills of sweat ran down her cheeks and she wiped them away and laughed. “I am melting!” she exclaimed.

Her eyes met David’s unconsciously, and instantly her laughter died. She had never seen him look at her thus. His eyes were on her passionately, grave and warm. The red flew into her cheeks and her knees trembled. Her tongue began to speak at random, without her mind, and yet repeating what her mind had been thinking.

“I have — have been — looking for the moment — to — to say something.” So she began.

“This moment,” David said.

She clasped her hands in front of her. “I–I have wept so much—”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because of what happened in the capital.” Her words rushed out now, hurrying to be said. “I want to ask you — I beg you — I would die if I had brought harm to you, or even a little trouble. I can — I will — go into the Buddhist nunnery. It is safe there, and you could tell the — the Chief Steward — I am to be a nun.”

“You a nun!” David cried in a low voice. He laughed silently, as though he wanted no one to hear him.

Yet who was there to hear? The house was sleeping and around them the hot afternoon sun shone down. There was not a sound even from outside the walls. The city slept and the very cicadas were still. And Peony stood before David as though she were caught fast in a web. She did not try to speak again. She could not, indeed.

What had brought him to this moment she could not imagine. She was amazed and fearful and love heated her veins and throbbed in her heart. He whom she had thought so cold all these weeks was suddenly all molten fire.

“Peony, follow me,” he commanded her.

He turned and she followed him into his sitting room. He leaned against the table and faced her. “I tell you this now and it must last our lives through. If I tell you, will you remember?”

“Yes,” she whispered, and her eyes did not waver from his.

“I have cheated myself all these years by saying you were like my sister,” he said. “I have been a fool. You have never been like my sister. Never could I have loved a sister as I loved you when we were children — and as I love you now.”

He looked at her steadily and she returned his look. This was the gift life gave her, this moment when he spoke these words. It would have been easy to put out both hands and take the gift, forgetting all else. But this was not possible for Peony. Too many years had she taken care of him and shielded him and strengthened him, planned for him and loved him. She could not think of herself now.

She tried to laugh. “All the more reason for me to be a nun, I think!”

He put aside her pretense at mirth. “Do not escape me by laughter,” he said sternly. “I know as well as you do what it means for me to — to say what I have said. Yet I had to say it so that you know now why I could not leave you in the palace. As long as I live you must stay in my house, Peony, for I cannot live without you. I know it at last.”

“Is this why you have been so cold to me all these weeks on the journey?” she asked.

“I was not cold to you. I was thinking of you, by day and by night,” he replied.

She could not pretend to laugh now. He was sorrowful and resolute and she could not bear to know that his love for her should bring with it trouble to him. “I thank you for telling me what you have in your heart.” Her voice was clear and grave. “I will keep your words in my heart forever. They are my comfort and they make my home.”

She clasped her hands together and she bowed and turned away to leave him.

At the door his voice held her again. “Further than this I have not thought. Yet what is to become of us?”

She paused, one foot on the threshold, her hand on the lintel of the door. “Time will show us,” she said gently, and then fearing lest he step forward to catch her hand or touch her shoulder, and dreading the weakness of love in her heart, she went quickly away.

That night it was impossible to sleep. She was glad that the bright moon that had attended them on their journey was gone. She crept through the darkness into the peach garden, and sat there alone under the trees. The stars were hidden by clouds, and the air was damp with coming rain. Yet she could not sit too long, for soon the mosquitoes began to whine about her. She lifted her wide sleeves and waved them like wings about her, and then she rose and walked to and fro. This walking — it was what Leah used to do, hour after hour, and when she thought of this suddenly Leah was here again and she could not shake off the sense of her presence. Yet why should she be afraid of Leah any more? She had the weapon now to still that ghost forever. If she would, she could go to David at this very hour and seal her love with her body, and what could Leah do to her — Leah, whose flesh was dust? She lifted her face to the dark sky, and ecstasy brimmed her heart. What if she went on silent feet while the house slept and took her advantage of David’s love? The victory would be hers.

She stopped alone in the darkness, her finger to her lip, smiling to herself. Into her secret life in this house he would come, and she would be alone no more. She shook her head and her hand fell and her smile was gone. Her heart beat hard. Why should it be secret? There was no law against a man taking to himself the woman he loved. All through the city men did so, even as Kung Chen had taken his pretty singing girl, who afterward betrayed him. None would raise a cry against David. Indeed, it would be the better for him, for it would bring him closer to his friends. There need be no ceremony. She would yield to her heart and go to him now, and in the morning she would tell Wang Ma and soon all would know, and her mistress could accept it and allow her the second place, or she could refuse to know and all would go on as before.

Thus Peony’s soft heart reasoned. Then her mind, solitary so long, grew hard and clear. Is David like other men? So mind inquired of heart.

At this moment, before she answered, she was suddenly startled by a strange thick cry. She lifted her head to listen, and her thoughts paused. There was no second sound, but feeling herself always responsible for this family, she went at once through the dark garden into the dimly lit great hall, and listened. Ezra’s rooms opened eastward from the hall and his windows into the garden, and she pressed her ear against his closed door. She heard his breathing coming from him in groans, very heavy and slow, and she opened the door softly.

“It is I, Peony!” she called softly. “Are you ill, Old Master?”

He did not answer but his loud breaths came and went as though he dragged them out of his bosom. She ran in then to his bedroom and blew alive the brown paper spill always smoldering in its urn of ashes, and she lit the oil lamp and held it high in her right hand while with the other she pulled aside the curtains. Ezra lay there, his pillow pushed aside, his head thrown back until his beard stood upright into the air. His eyes were open and glazed and his whole face was purple and his back arched and stiff. He did not see or hear her, for his whole attention was fixed upon drawing his breath in and pushing it out again.

“Oh, Heaven!” Peony cried. She dropped the curtain and ran to David’s room and beat upon his door. Then she tried to open it. It was locked! Even in the midst of her terror she paused. Why had he locked the door — except against her? Or perhaps against himself! He heard her now and he answered, “What is it?”

“It is I, Peony!” she cried. “Your father has been smitten down!”

He came out almost at once, tall in his pale night garments, and fastening his silk girdle as he came out he passed her.

“I heard your father cry out — and I went in — being in the peach garden—” She stammered this as she followed him, and they entered Ezra’s room.

There was no sound of breathing now. When David parted the curtains and Peony looked in by his shoulder, she saw the old man lying with his arms and legs flung wide, as though embattled against death. But he had lost. He was dead. His beard lay on his bosom, and his eyes stared up severe and cold. She pushed David aside when she saw those eyes, and with her fingers she drew down the lids, lest they stiffen in that stare until they fell into decay, and she drew his arms to his sides and laid one foot beside the other and covered him. “So that he looks only asleep,” she murmured.

All this time David had stood there. Now he fell upon his knees, and he took one of Ezra’s hands and held it. There was no doubt of death. He knew the moment that he saw his father that there could be no use in doubt. He must rouse the household, call Kung Chen, make the death known through the city. Everything had to be done, but he delayed in disbelief.

“We were talking only a few hours ago,” he muttered.

“It is a good way to die,” Peony said gently. But suddenly she was frightened. Without Ezra in this house, would the heart of kindness be gone from it? Why — why had David locked his door against her? She knelt and put her head down upon the bed and began to weep. “He was so good!” she sobbed. “He was so good — to me!”

She waited, wondering, half heartbroken, if David would put his arm about her shoulder to comfort her. But he did not. Instead he began to stroke his father’s hand gently, as though Ezra still lived.