Peony

XIII

SO EZRA BEN ISRAEL died, and he was buried next to his father, and a little above the place where Madame Ezra’s dust mingled with the Chinese earth.

This was the thought that struck itself into David’s mind as he stood beside his father’s open grave. He thought of his mother, and of how strong she had been, and still was, in his being. The struggle that she had maintained all her life to keep herself and her family separate was over now. Death had vanquished her. The early evening air was sweet upon the hillside, and David was not unmindful of the great crowd that stood here with him to see his father buried. He was almost glad that his mother was not living to see how the kindness of Ezra’s many friends had made the funeral so nearly like that of a Chinese official that it would have been hard indeed to discover in it anything of his people. Only in David’s heart was there the knowledge of his own origin. He understood now, for the first time in his life, why his mother had longed so deeply to return to her own land and there be buried. She knew, doubtless, as she knew much beyond what she ever told, that if she died here, her very dust would be lost in the dust of the alien earth. Five layers deep did the cities lie dead under the ground upon which he stood, and generation had built upon generation in this old countryside and no grave could be dug deep enough to escape the ancient dead. His father and his mother were inexorably committed to the common human soil, and nevermore could they belong to a separate people.

The chant of Buddhist priests startled him for a moment. David had earnestly wished to refuse when the abbot of The Temple of the Golden Buddha came to pay his respects to the dead, and he tried to find the courage to say that Buddhism was not the religion of his father. With what courtesy he could muster he had tried to tell the old priest that it would not be fitting to allow Buddhist music at the grave. The abbot had replied with great dignity:

“Your father, although a foreigner, had a large heart, and he never separated himself from any man. We wish to honor him with what we have, and we have nothing except our religion.”

The low soft wailing of the chants rolled over the hillside and rose toward the sky, and David pondered while he listened, his head bowed and his hands clasped before him. On either side of him stood his sons, dressed as he was in coarse white sackcloth. Even the youngest child was so dressed. Behind him his wife wept dutifully aloud and he knew she leaned on Peony.

Peony! Of all that was dear in his childhood, only she remained. He thought of the hour, three days ago, when he had told her that he loved her. What he had not dared to tell her was how he longed to possess her wholly. He was uncomfortable even now when he remembered his longing, remembering his mother’s wrath whenever his father had reminded her that his own mother had been a concubine. Yet here, among his friends, these people who supported him so warmly today, not a voice would be raised against him were he to make Peony his concubine. They would congratulate him on her beauty and welcome him as one of themselves. Even his wife might not complain — would not, indeed, for Peony was too delicate and courteous to wound her, and her manner would never change to her mistress.

Yet, that night, when all his heart and flesh longed to call Peony to him, he had suddenly locked the door of his bedroom. He had forced himself to take up a book — what chance had made his hand fall upon the Torah itself? He had been awestruck at such coincidence, and he had sat hour after hour reading, until Peony’s cry had startled him.

His mind flew back to the days when Leah was alive, and his heart had trembled between love and fear. Had he and Leah met later in his life, after the youthful tide of rebellion against his mother had passed, perhaps he might have loved Leah. He thought of her even now with a strange regret, remembering her beauty, her simplicity, her high proud spirit. Her desperate death, for his sake, had given her a power over his memory that he did not deny. Something of Leah lived in him still, though no more than a dream of what had never been.

Yet it was hard to imagine his life without Kueilan, and only with Leah — and Peony. Ah, but Leah would never have allowed him Peony! Kueilan had been more generous, and he liked this generosity. He knew that had his mother been living at this moment, he would not have acknowledged to her his disappointment in his wife. He had married Kueilan for her pretty face and her rounded creamy flesh, for her dark eyes and her little hands, for her heart as free as a child’s from fear of God. If she had been lacking in other ways — He lifted his head suddenly and straightened his shoulders. Let him acknowledge the truth! With Peony always in his house, he had known no lack. She met his mind fully. With her he discussed his sons and his business and all his problems, and she had arranged his pleasures and his household affairs, and she had shielded him from petty cares. His life had been good.

The chanting ended, and he heard the first clods fall upon his father’s coffin. The magistrate had presented that coffin, and it was made from a huge log of cypress wood, carved and gilded. Kung Chen, standing across the grave in somber purple robes of secondary mourning, wiped his eyes. He had not wept aloud as the lesser mourners had done, and even now he was silent while the tears kept running down his cheeks. He had loved Ezra well, and that he had never trusted him wholly did not make his love less. No man was perfect, and he had been amused to discover that not even the union between their families could ensure him against Ezra’s love of money. Yet in other ways Ezra had been warmhearted. He could be tempted to cheat me himself, but at least he would never allow another to cheat me, Kung Chen thought sorrowfully, and he grieved sincerely that he would see no more the ruddy bearded face of his friend. He felt eyes upon him and he looked up and found David’s gaze fastened upon him across the grave.

David looked down again, and he thought, Kung Chen is nearest now to me as a father. He loved the good Chinese merchant, and yet the knowledge of his new nearness startled him. The last root was cut with his mother’s people. Here he was now, forever, irrevocably. The memory of old conscience stirred in him unhappily.

When at last the long funeral was over, David went home again, bearing this prick of conscience in him. It remained upon him alone to keep alive the vestiges of old faith — or let them die.

Peony had managed to reach home early, and it was her face that David first saw when he entered the gate. She perceived his relief.

“Ah, Peony, see to the household,” he murmured. “I must be alone for a while.”

“Leave all to me,” she replied steadily.

He thanked her, with a smile warm in his eyes and touching his lips, and passed her and went to his own rooms. There was enough for Peony to do with the children, and the youngest was crying loudly now for comfort. She took the child from the weary nurse and hushed him in her arms.

“Go and change your garments,” she bade the woman. “When you are in your usual ones he will not be so frightened.”

She held and coaxed him with soft words. So had she held and comforted all of David’s sons, for they were the only children she had. Each one of them recognized her for someone not quite his mother, and yet somehow stronger than his mother, a decisive voice in his life and a comfort when his mother was cross or sleeping. Peony never changed. Kueilan could love her children extravagantly and heap them with sweets and pattings and pressings of hands and smellings of their cheeks, but she could slap them, too, and scold them loudly. Peony was always gentle, never too warm and never cold. She was the rock in the foundation of their lives. The child stopped crying and she took off his outer garments and she made him dry and warm and fed him a little fresh tea from a bowl, and when the nurse returned her charge was cheerful again.

So Peony went from one to the other, and saw that each child was made happy by some small attention and at play. She kept a little store of hidden toys, trifles that she bought here and there, always new to the children, and she brought out something now for each child, to cast out the thought of death.

“Shall we never see Grandfather again?” the eldest child asked.

“His spirit is always here,” Peony replied.

“Can I see his spirit?” the child asked again.

“Not with your eyes,” Peony replied. “But in the night sometimes think of him and how he looks and then you will feel him with you. Now here is a little book I have kept for you — see if you can read it.”

Peony had been the tutor for the little boys. Now she sat down and the two eldest leaned their elbows on her knees and she opened the book and they tried to read. She took pride in their quickness and she praised them heartily and they forgot the sadness in the house. The book was one she had found on Madame Ezra’s own shelf. Long ago Peony had sorted these books and she had put some in the library and some in the box of Madame Ezra’s private possessions with the shawls and trinkets and sacred emblems that suited no one else now. But Peony had kept for herself a little book written in simple Chinese words that told the story of Madame Ezra’s people, how they had once been held slaves in Egypt, and had been set free by a favorite of the queen, who had in his veins some of the strange blood. This story David’s sons now read with wonder.

“Where is this Egypt?” one son asked.

“Why were those people slaves?” the eldest asked, and again he asked, “Who was the Moses who set them free?”

He looked very solemn when the story was finished. “But it was not kind of their god to kill all the eldest born, like me. I am glad that god is not here.”

None of the questions could Peony answer, and so she said, “It is all only a story, long ago finished.”

After she had put the book away and had seen to it that the children had their supper and were playing, she pondered these questions in her heart. Surely someone in the house should answer them, lest later, when the children were grown, they would know nothing of their ancestors, and this would be an evil. Ancestors are the roots in any house, and children are the flowers, and the two must not be cut asunder. She made up her mind that when she had time she would delve into Madame Ezra’s old books and discover for herself enough to answer the children’s questions.

Now she must go to her mistress and see that she was comfortable and in fair spirits. The twilight was falling and the air was still and mild as she crossed the courts. The house was very quiet, and she missed with some sort of heartache the two who were gone. Yet the generations passed, and now David was the head and the oldest living generation. She thought suddenly of the locked door. Indeed, she had not for one moment forgotten it. He had locked his own door against her, for the first time in their lives. What if it had been against himself? Still, it was against her. She would never go to him now. The door was locked forever — unless he himself unlocked it.

Yet she was unchanged. She must do much for him, more than ever before. Comfort and amusement were no longer enough. She must study what would add to his dignity and his growth. His life must be of fullest worth, so that he could find strength and peace in himself. She lifted her face to the sky for a moment. She had never made a prayer in her life, and she knew no god, but her heart searched Heaven and fastened upon the god of his people, whose name, she remembered, was Jehovah.

Deign to hear the voice of one unknown to You, she prayed within herself. Inform my spirit so that I may serve with wisdom the man whom I love.

She stood a moment, waiting, but no sign came. The bamboos rustled slightly in the almost silent air, and somewhere in the city a woman’s sorrowful voice called in the distance to summon home again the wandering spirit of her dying child.

Inside the house Kueilan sat in state. She was now the mistress, the eldest lady of the ruling generation. She had recovered from the discomfort of the journey to the grave on the hillside, and she was eating sweetmeats and drinking hot tea with relish. Even her eyes were no longer red from weeping.

When she saw Peony come in she made a plaintive mouth, nevertheless, and put down the cake she was about to eat. “I shall miss our dear old lord,” she said.

“So shall we all, Lady,” Peony replied quietly. She saw that her mistress was ready to talk, and she sat down on a side seat and folded her hands.

“He was so kind to me,” Kueilan mourned. “I never felt in him anything hard or cross.”

“There was nothing,” Peony agreed.

Tears came to Kueilan’s eyes. “He was kinder than my own lord,” she declared.

“Your lord is very kind, Lady,” Peony said gently.

Kueilan’s tears dried suddenly. “There is something hard in the bottom of his heart,” she replied with energy. “I feel it there, and so would you, Peony, if you did not think him so perfect. But you are not married to him, and I am. I tell you there is something very hard in his heart — I can see it in his eyes sometimes when he looks at me.”

Peony sighed. “I have told you, Lady, that he likes to see you always fresh and pretty, and sometimes you will not let me dress you for his coming or even brush your hair. And there are nights when you are weary and will not let me bathe you before you go to sleep. Those sweetmeats, Lady — you know he has never liked the smell of pig’s fat, and these are larded. Why do you eat them?”

Through the years Peony had learned to speak very honestly to the beautiful little creature who now sat frowning at her. Yes, Kueilan was still beautiful, although it was true that a layer of soft fat was creeping over her dainty skeleton, and she complained that her feet had hurt her ever since Peony took away the bandages. She seldom moved unless it was necessary, and she loved sweets and delicate foods. Now Peony laughed at her frown. “Do not hate me, Lady, for I love you too well.”

Kueilan clung to her scowl as long as she could until her own laughter compelled her to give it up. “You scold me too much,” she declared. “I tell you, Peony, you must give it up. I am the elder lady now and you must obey me. It is not right any more for you to tell me what to do.”

This little creature drew herself up straight and looked at Peony with something more than laughter sparkling in her big black eyes.

Peony saw this with astonishment and wonder. Willful her mistress always was, but she could always be coaxed and teased and made to laugh. If now she grew proud and high, then indeed David might lose his patience with her. The bond between them was only of flesh, and it could be easily broken. David was not a man of lust. Passion he had, but it was entangled with spirit and mind, and he could not separate into parts that which was his whole being. So long as his wife was pretty and warm and sweet-tempered enough in his presence not to offend him, quiet enough not to rouse his contempt, she could hold him by the strands that touched his heart. But let her offend him somewhere, and her hold was too light to keep. She did not possess him.

These things Peony knew. There was so much time in her life for musing, and since all her life was in this house, she had mused about each soul under its roof, and most of all she had pondered upon David. She told herself that now she had passed beyond jealousy or hope, and her concern was only that he might receive from each source all that was there for his happiness and health.

She curbed her astonishment at the new pride she found in her mistress. “You know very well that you do all for your lord’s sake and willingly, Lady,” she said quietly. She moved into the bedroom then to see that it was prepared for the night. It was a lady’s room, made for her mistress, but she knew when David had come to it. There were always signs of his presence in the morning, his pipe, his slippers, his white silk handkerchief, a book he had chosen to bring with him. Such books she often examined. At first they had been books of poetry, but now they were always books of history or philosophy, abstruse pages that assuredly he could not read aloud to his wife. Since they had come home, the books had been from his mother’s library, which for the first time he was beginning to read; why, Peony did not know, and she pondered very much what change had come into David, that in the last few days he should recall his ancestors.

When she had seen to the lamp, had dusted the table and folded the quilt ready, had loosened the heavy satin bed curtains from their silver hooks, had closed the latticed window against moths and mosquitoes, and had lit a stick of incense to pour fragrance into the air, she stepped softly from the room. Her mistress still sat idle by the table.

“Shall I help you to undress, Lady?” Peony asked.

Kueilan shook her head. “It is too early to sleep,” she declared imperiously. “Leave me alone a while.”

Peony obeyed the command and went away. It would indeed be a different house if her mistress were to shape its daily life. She stopped in the third court and considered. Should she go to David? If she did not, he would think it strange. And might he not need her? She could not go. The memory of the locked door was there. Instead she went to a side court in search of Wang Ma, and found her sitting on her bed, and Old Wang near her on a bamboo stool. Both were weeping.

She had forgotten them in all her duties, for as the years had passed it had come to be that more and more they had served Ezra while she had served the next generation. Now they were bereft. She did not presume to comfort them, but she took her sleeves and wiped her own eyes and waited until Wang Ma spoke.

“Sister, I ask you a favor,” Wang Ma said sobbing.

“Ask it, Elder Sister,” Peony replied.

“I have no heart to stay here in this house any more, I and my old man. We will go to the village and live with our eldest son and our own grandsons. Speak for us to the new master.”

They were so broken by sorrow that Peony had no courage to say what she had been about to ask, that they go and serve David in her place.

“I will speak to him as soon as he is able to forget his own sorrow for an hour,” she promised, “and be comforted, the two of you, for he will refuse you nothing. Yet how shall I manage alone, Elder Sister? I have always leaned on you.”

“I have no heart any more in this house,” Wang Ma replied, and she began to weep again.

So Peony left them sadly and found a manservant and bade him go and see if the master wished food or anything, and so she went alone to her own rooms. It was night and she felt weary indeed and the future was not plain before her eyes.

Now Ezra had had no time to tell Kung Chen of the reason why David and his family had left the northern capital so suddenly, and David in his grief had forgotten it. As if the grief were not enough, the ships loaded with goods from India sent word that they had reached port, and that the goods was being brought overland by carriers. Yet since the wars were so recently over and the people everywhere were poor there were many robbers, and David must arrange for guards and soldiers in each province through which the loads would pass. He had no time for mourning even for his father. Immediately he must return to his business. In the midst of all this trouble, he still forgot to tell Kung Chen of what had happened in regard to Peony. He was troubled within and without, for in the house he soon saw that Peony had separated herself from him, and this fretted him, even though he knew it was her wisdom so to do. He told himself that when his troubles were settled and the goods safely in the shops and the continual pain of seeing his father no more were all over, then he would face his own heart again and know what he must do with Peony.

He was in no wise prepared for Kung Chen, therefore, who came to him one morning with looks of consternation. David was in his own part of the shop, computing the quantity of the goods that were beginning to arrive each day, and appraising the quality of the fine cotton stuffs that had been woven in India. With him sat his partner, Kung Chen’s eldest son, and the two were deep in their affairs. Both were surprised when Kung Chen came in.

“David, come aside with me for a moment, and you, too, my son,” Kung Chen said gravely.

Both men followed him into a small room, where Kung Chen shut the door. His full face was gray with alarm, and his lips were pale.

“A messenger has come to us from our shops in the northern capital,” he said in a voice scarcely above a whisper. “He tells me that there is anger in the palace against us, David. The Chief Steward has sent out the rumor that one of your bondmaids was rude to the Western Empress. What is the meaning of this?”

David’s heart fell. All was clear to him in an instant, and with difficulty he told the story to the two, who listened in silence.

“The Chief Steward will certainly demand that Peony be sent for on the pretense of punishment,” Kung Chen said when David had finished. “If we refuse to give her up, then we must never hope to do good business again. The arm of the imperial favorite is long.”

“I will return to the capital alone,” David said. “I will seek audience with the empresses and tell them the truth.”

Both Chinese cried out at this. “Folly — folly!” Kung Chen declared. “Can you hope to prevail against the Chief Steward? He is in the imperial confidence and you would only be casting away your own life. No, there is no hope except to make her go.”

“That I cannot do,” David said.

Both men looked at him strangely and he had much difficulty in not allowing his eyes to falter before theirs. Then father and son looked at one another. They remembered how beautiful Peony was. Indeed, Kung Chen had remarked once or twice to his son that it might be difficult for any man to remain unmoved by so beautiful a bondmaid, who was clever and learned besides.

For David the moment was intolerable. “You wonder at me,” he said stiffly, “but I assure you, what you think is not possible. In my religion — the religion, that is, of my people — a man is allowed only one wife. I feel — gratitude to the bondmaid — who has been like a daughter in our house. I cannot deliver her to — to the eunuch.”

Kung Chen grasped at a hope. “If she is willing to go of her own will?”

David could not tell the truth, nor did he know why he could not. These men would not blame him did he say openly that he loved Peony and wanted her for himself. They would have laughed and pondered how to save her for him. He could not say it. He bowed his head. “If she wishes to go — for her own sake,” he stammered, “let it be so.”

They went back to their business then, and David tried to apply himself. Yet how could he think of figures and goods or even of profits? Kung Chen would summon Peony and force her, he would press her to realize how great a damage she would do to David and to all their two houses, and in her soft unselfishness Peony might yield. His mind misted and he could not go on.

“I feel ill,” he told Kung the First. “I shall go home and sleep a while and come back tomorrow.”

His partner stared at him and said nothing, but David saw the shrewdness in his small kind eyes and he hurried away. He could not delay one instant. As soon as he reached home he sent for Peony and waited restlessly until she came running to his rooms, still wiping her hands dry.

“I was in the kitchens,” she confessed. “They told me the jar of soy sauce was not thickening properly and I went to see.”

He paid no heed to this, but he saw her beautiful and strong, the pillar of his household. He could not live without her. “Peony, sit down,” he commanded abruptly.

She sat down on the edge of her chair, alarmed at his looks and at the sound of his voice. “What has happened now?” she asked.

He told her roughly and quickly, eager to get the burden off his own heart and knowing her able to bear anything. But he was frightened when he saw the pink drain from her cheeks and the strength from her frame. “I told you I must be a nun,” she whispered. “I shall not be able to save you otherwise.” She rose and began to untie the blue apron she had forgotten.

“Wait,” he commanded her. “There is another way for you to stay with me.”

Peony knew well what he meant, but her heart had hardened at last and she would not spare him.

“What way?” she demanded.

“You know,” David said in a low voice, and he would not look at her.

She was angry that he turned away, and she spoke for him firmly. “You mean — take me as your concubine?”

“Yes,” he said, and still he did not look at her.

She saw his face was fixed and strained. There was no joy in his eyes. The apron dropped from her hands. “You locked your door against me,” she said. “Why?”

“How do I know?” he asked.

“You do know,” she retorted. “You were afraid of the very thing that now you ask. You were afraid of yourself — of that which is in you still and will be in you so long as you live!”

“I deny it!” he said in a loud voice.

“It will not be denied,” she said. “It is born in you.”

He bent his head on his hand and did not answer. As clearly as though she lived, he saw Leah and heard her voice, and her voice was the voice of his mother and the voice of all those men and women who had lived before him. It was the voice of Jehovah Himself.

“If I yielded to you,” Peony said in her gentle swift way, “your own conscience would grow more dear as you loved me less. No, David, I dare not. Let me go. Yes, I will go of my own free will — but not to the palace!”

She ran out of the room and David could not pursue her. What she had said was true. That which his mother had pressed into his unwilling soul had taken root there. He had defied it and crucified it, but it was not dead. It lived in him still, the spirit of the faith of his own people. It had risen from the dead and claimed him. He could not free himself. He fell on his knees, his arms folded upon the table, and leaned his head upon his arms. “O Jehovah, the One True God, hear me — and forgive me!”

Across the city Peony sped on foot, her head down, her hands empty. The gate of the nunnery was open and she entered it. The courts were still, but she cried out, “Oh, Mother Abbess, I am here!”

A gentle old woman dressed in gray robes came out and her hands were outspread to receive. “Come in, poor soul,” she said.

“I am in danger,” Peony gasped.

“Here the gods protect us from all men,” the Mother Abbess replied.

“Ah, lock the gate!” Peony begged. Now that she was here she was terrified at what she had done to herself. She seized the old woman’s hand. “If I ask to go out — do not allow me!” she implored.

“I will not,” the Mother Abbess promised, and she drew the iron bar across the gate.

How could David believe that Peony would not come back to his house? He waited for several hours, his mind thick with confusion. Then, too restless for longer waiting, he sent for Wang Ma and bade her go to the nunnery and see if Peony were there. So dark was his look that Wang Ma did not dare ask a question, and she went off in silent consternation.

In his secret heart David was afraid lest Peony had thrown herself into the river, and his spirits lifted when Wang Ma came back in an hour to say that Peony was indeed in the nunnery. He heard this news in silence, and then, knowing that it would soon spread in the house, he saw that he must tell Kueilan immediately what had happened. That is, he would tell her that Peony had feared lest the chief eunuch reach out his arm and seize her in spite of all that could be done. He would not tell Kueilan of the confusion that had been in his own heart or of the strange stillness that he now felt when a gate had been locked between him and Peony. Yet had not she left him? He was somehow wounded that she could leave him, running out of his house like a beaten slave, although he had loved her from their childhood so well that he did not know when childish love had changed into something more. He feared to face this love, whatever it had become, and fearing it now, he turned away from it and reproached Peony in his heart. She had no right to leave me so suddenly, he told himself, and feeling ill used, he let himself be angry with her, and upon this anger he went to find his wife.

As it chanced, Kueilan was this day in her sweetest mood. She enjoyed being the mistress of the house and knowing that her husband was master, and that there were no elders above them. All that was foreign here was now gone, and she smiled easily and was patient with servants and children. When David came to the moon gate of her court, he saw a picture that might content the heart of any man. This pretty woman who was his wife sat surrounded by her children playing about her. His sons had taken a holiday since Peony had not come to teach them, and the eldest was playing shuttlecock and the second was playing with a cricket on a string and Kueilan held the third in her lap. Chrysanthemums were blooming in the terraces against the walls and the afternoon sun shone down upon flowers and children. Now David saw again what sometimes he forgot — how great was Kueilan’s beauty. Her creamy skin was as smooth in the clear light as the baby’s, her lips were red, her hair, under Peony’s long care, was shining black and oiled. This very morning Peony had put jade pins into the knot of rich hair to match jade earrings and a coat of apple green.

Why should I not be happy? David inquired of his own heart.

He paused at the gate and now they all saw him. Kueilan rose and the boys ran to their father. The maids were busy elsewhere and Kueilan followed him. The sun had been as kind to David as to her, and for the same moment he had seen again how beautiful she was, Kueilan had seen her husband as he stood at the gate, tall and at the best of his manhood. He had never allowed his beard to grow too long, as some foreigners did, and his smooth face, large dark eyes, firm lips, and above all his strong frame stirred her heart. She loved her husband, but in the round of days she had forgotten how well. She sat down near him, and their eyes kindled to each other. David took his youngest son from her arms. “Let me see how big he is,” he said.

Kueilan made haste to put under the child a padded cloth. “Not so big, naughty fellow, that he cannot wet you!” she exclaimed.

David laughed, and the two elder boys, hearing this, came and leaned their elbows on his knees. Above the three fine children, the eyes of the parents met again and smiled.

“How is it you are home at this hour?” Kueilan inquired.

“A very strange thing has happened,” David said. “You remember the chief eunuch, who wanted Peony?” How easily he said this to his wife! He was amazed at his own calm.

“Do not tell me he still wants her!” Kueilan exclaimed with lively interest.

David nodded. “Since Peony will not go, there is only one way to escape without bringing danger to our house.”

Kueilan was watching his face very closely. He felt — ah, but he knew — that he could never tell her the depths of his heart. Did he himself know those depths? What man knows what is dearest to him when all he has is weighed and measured, one love against another?

“She has gone to the nunnery,” he said quietly.

“To stay?” Kueilan asked, her eyes very wide.

“How else can she be safe?” he replied.

Now the children began to ask questions. “Will Peony never live here any more?” the eldest asked.

“If she is a nun she must live in the temple,” Kueilan said.

The younger son began to cry. “I want to see Peony again,” he sobbed.

“Be quiet!” his mother said. “She can come to see us — as soon as she is a real nun.”

David sat silent, toying with his little son’s hand. Upon his open palm he spread the baby hand, and the child’s palm was warm upon his own.

Kueilan was gathering her wits together. She, too, was weighing and measuring good against evil. She would miss Peony sorely — but Peony could come here as often as she liked after her novitiate was over. True, she must always return to the temple at night, but then it might be pleasant not to have Peony here always. She did not need her as she had before the old people died. It did not matter now whether everything was done according to the rules and traditions. Yes, perhaps it would be better not to have Peony here. Sometimes it was almost as if Peony had been the mistress. A secret jealousy that had slept in her because Peony was useful to her now sprang alive. Peony was much too beautiful. Peony could read books and David liked to talk with her.

“It is a good thing for Peony to be a nun,” Kueilan suddenly declared. “She would not marry, and what can a woman do then except be a nun? Many times I told Peony that we should choose a husband for her, but no, she would not hear me. A woman gets no younger. She would have had to be a nun one of these days — that is, if she would not enter the Imperial Palace. If she had gone there, then of course—”

“She could not,” David said abruptly, not looking up.

Kueilan felt her jealousy. “She could have gone if she had loved us as much as she always pretended,” she cried. “What could have been better for the family than to have her in the Imperial Court? She might have spoken for you there, and when our sons grew older, she could have had them to visit, and I could have visited her, too, and all sorts of favors could have come from it.”

David did not reply. The baby’s fingers curled into his palm and he closed his hand over the little fist. Suddenly he stood up, and stooping he put the child into the mother’s lap. “It will be strange here without Peony,” he said quietly. “But she has decided wisely. I must go back to the shop for an hour.”

He touched his wife’s round cheek with his hand and went away. A stillness was in his heart. Some part of his life was ended. He had made a choice without declaring even to himself what that choice was, but he knew the struggle was over. He was master of his heart as well as of his house.

When Wang Ma had gone to find Peony, the nun at the gate had refused to let her come in until she asked permission of the Mother Abbess. The cloisters were whispering with the excitement of the nuns and novices over the coming of the beautiful young woman from the house of Ezra. All knew that the old master there had died only a short time before, for who in the city had not heard of his splendid funeral? The Mother Abbess heard the whisperings but she had not yet questioned Peony. There must be time for sorrow to spend itself. She had commanded that Peony be given a large quiet room facing a small bamboo grove. Hot water was taken to her by the novices that she might bathe, and fresh soft robes of smooth gray grass cloth were laid upon a chair. When the novices reported that Peony had bathed and had dressed herself in the gray robes, the Mother Abbess commanded that Peony’s other garments be taken away and locked in a chest, and then that vegetarian foods be put before her and a pot of the most delicate tea. All this was done.

When the Mother Abbess heard that an old woman was at the gate she herself went to Peony. There Peony sat by the window, her hands folded. In the gray robes she looked so beautiful that the Mother Abbess felt her heart ache. Long ago when her own young husband had died, less than a month after their marriage, she had come to this place. She had first waited to make sure that her womb held no fruit, and then she had sworn herself away to Heaven. She understood the look of a woman who knows that she must live alone.

“There is at the gate an old servant, surnamed Wang, who wishes to see you, my child,” she said gently. “Shall I bid her come in?”

Peony rose and turned her great sorrowful eyes upon the kind face of the Abbess. She was about to shake her head, and then she could not. What she had done had been so quickly done. Doubtless David had sent Wang Ma to find her.

“It is better that she come in,” Peony said.

So Wang Ma came in, and when she saw Peony in the gray robes she was speechless and the tears began to run down her wrinkled cheeks. She held out her arms and Peony could not hold back. She ran to Wang Ma and the two women wept aloud together and the Abbess bowed her head, waiting.

It was Wang Ma who wiped her eyes first. She sat down. “My legs are trembling,” she muttered.

Peony stood, the tears on her cheeks.

“What did he do to you?” Wang Ma asked.

Peony shook her head and wiped her eyes on her sleeves. “Nothing,” she answered in a small voice.

“So he did nothing,” Wang Ma repeated. She continued to gaze at Peony.

Peony looked at the floor. “That eunuch sent to find me again,” she said in the same small voice.

“And you being neither wife nor concubine—” Wang Ma went on.

“I have no one to protect me,” Peony agreed.

Wang Ma sighed loudly. “Is it too late for you to come back?” she asked.

“What is there for me except sorrow?” Peony replied.

“If you had only done as I did,” Wang Ma complained. “I took the man they gave me and I lived on with the family, and I served my master until he went to the Yellow Springs. Now even my old man is a comfort to me.”

How could Peony tell her that David was different from his father, and she different from Wang Ma? She smiled with her lips while her eyes were filled with tears. “Do you remember you told me once that life is sad?”

This she said in so gentle and distant a voice that Wang Ma did not reply. She groaned two or three times, her hands planted on her knees while she stared at Peony, and then she stared at the Mother Abbess.

“Will you shave her head?” she asked the Abbess.

“I will be obedient to law,” Peony said, before the Abbess could answer.

Wang Ma sighed and got up. “If your heart is set on Heaven, there is no use for me to stay,” she said sharply. “Have you no message for our master?”

Now the Mother Abbess, watching Peony, saw the story plain. A rich and lovely rose color spread over Peony’s neck and face. Her red lips quivered and the tears hung heavy on her lashes. “I may never see him again,” she murmured.

At this the Mother Abbess took pity on Peony. Long ago she had wept the nights through, thinking that she could never be free from the love and longing in her heart. Yet somehow the heart had healed, and agony was lost in the past. What she remembered now, when she remembered at all, was the sweetness of the days when her husband had been living, and the pain of her loss had faded.

“It is not necessary to say that now,” she told Peony. “We will see how the heart heals.”

Wang Ma nodded shrewdly at this and went away.

After she had gone, the Mother Abbess sat down while Peony continued to stand. These words of the Mother Abbess had been spoken very quietly but they rang in Peony’s heart like bells. She looked up. “Do you mean, Mother, that I shall cease to love him?”

The Mother Abbess smiled. “Love changes,” she replied. “When the flame dies, the glow remains, but it no longer centers upon one human creature and it warms the whole soul. Then the soul looks at all human creatures with love diffused.”

Peony listened to this and was silent. She stood there, her robes flowing away from her, and the Mother Abbess felt her pity rise and surround this younger woman.

“Shall I tell you why I came here?” Peony asked after a while.

“Only if it comforts you to do so,” the Abbess replied.

“There is no law that I must tell why I escaped?” Peony asked.

“None,” the Abbess answered. “We are all here for some sorrow or other. What was our life became monstrous, and we found refuge. The only thing that I must have known was whether you had a husband’s power over you, so that I might have bargained for your freedom from him.”

“I have said truly that I have no husband,” Peony replied.

“Then live here in peace,” the Abbess said. “Heaven is above and earth is beneath us all.”

So saying she rose and went away. Peony stood for a long time more, feeling neither weariness nor pain. A deep stillness stole into her being.

For three years Peony lived behind the gate of the cloisters. So long did it take for the flame in her heart to change to that glow of which the Mother Abbess had spoken. In all that time she did not see David. No man was allowed to step within the gate and she did not step outside. The very day after Wang Ma had left her she took up the life of the cloisters. When she had studied the sacred books, had learned the ritual of prayers, had taken her share of labor in caring for the gods, in tending the garden, and in serving in the kitchen, when the older nuns cut off her long black hair and shaved her head, she ended her life as a novice. She took the vows and she became a nun. The secret life of her heart was over. The Mother Abbess gave her a new name, Ching An, or Clear Peace.

But during these three years Kueilan had come often to see Peony. In the first year she had come only twice. Peony had sat almost silent while Kueilan, her usual self, had chattered, lively and curious about all she saw and telling Peony the gossip in her own house. Thus Peony heard that Wang Ma and Old Wang had returned to their village and lived now with their sons. Thus she knew, too, that Aaron after Ezra’s death had gone back to his old idle ways until David in anger had bade Kao Lien’s sons take him away when they traveled with the caravan, now that Kao Lien was too old. This they had done, and they had left him in some country west of the mountains, where there were Jewish people living who could teach him to mend his heart, and he was never heard of any more.

But after the first year Kueilan came often. She had borne another child, a fourth son, and when he was a month old she brought him for Peony to see. Kueilan was proud that she had so many sons, but when the nuns went away and left her alone with Peony, she poured out her dislike of this new child.

“Look at him!” she exclaimed as the nurse stood and swayed with him in her arms. “Is he my child, Peony?”

Never could Kueilan remember to call her anything except this old name.

“You bore him,” Peony said, smiling. Heaven had made her Kueilan’s equal now, and she needed no more to call her Mistress.

Kueilan pouted. “He looks like his foreign grandmother.”

Peony could not but laugh. Indeed the tiny boy did look strangely like Madame Ezra. His big strong features did not fit his small face. She motioned to the nurse to let her hold the child. When he was on her lap she looked at his feet and hands. They were big, too. “He will be a big man,” she declared. “Look at his ears, how long the lobes are — that means boldness and wisdom. This son is a lucky one.”

So she consoled Kueilan, and Kueilan, feeling warm toward Peony, coaxed her thus: “Come and visit us again — why not? The maids do not listen to me as well as they did to you, Peony. My eldest son is lazy at his books and his father beat him for it yesterday and I cried and then he was angry with me. If you come, they will all listen to you, Peony, as they always did.”

But Peony, still smiling, shook her head and gave the baby back to his nurse.

“You are the same Peony, even if your head is shaven,” Kueilan coaxed.

Peony was startled. Did these words uncover her heart? Was it because she was shaven and a nun that she did not want David to see her? She grew grave, and by her silence Kueilan thought she had won her way. When she went home that day she told David that she had persuaded Peony to come and visit them for a day, and then he turned grave, too, and silent.

In her cell again, Peony cruelly examined her heart. It is true, she thought. I dread his eyes upon me.

There was no mirror in any nun’s room, but she filled her basin with clear water and she bent over it in the faint sunlight at the end of that day and she saw herself dimly. For the first time she saw her hair gone, and she thought herself ugly. Nothing else could she see, not her dark quiet eyes or her red lips or the smooth outlines of her young face. Her whole beauty, it seemed to her now, had been in her hair, in the braid she used to knot over one ear, in the flowers she had loved to wear in it. For one long moment she looked at herself. Then she lifted the basin and poured the water out of the open window upon a bed of lilies that grew beside the wall.

It is my punishment to let him see me, she told herself.

Yet she did not go for two full years more to the house of David. Kueilan bore her fifth child, this time a daughter, and had conceived her sixth, when one day a servant came in haste to the nunnery to beg Peony to come, because the eldest son of the house lay dying. She gave Peony a folded paper, and Peony opened it, and there David had written a few words.

“For my son’s sake, come.”

“I will come,” she told the maidservant, and she hastened to the Mother Abbess for permission. The Abbess had grown old and frail in the last few years and she never left her cell. To all she was kind, but Peony she loved exceedingly, as the daughter she had never had. Now she clasped Peony’s hand and held it a moment.

“The fire in you is quenched?” she asked.

“Yes, Mother,” Peony said.

“Then go, my child,” the Abbess replied, “and while you are away, I will pray for the boy’s life.”

So Peony went out that day from the refuge that was now her home, and as she walked along the street she quieted her beating heart with steady prayers, her rosary of brown satinwood twisted in her fingers. When she entered the familiar gate David was there waiting for her, and her heart quickened until her will commanded stillness. She looked at him fearlessly, determined that their eyes should not speak anything but cool friendship.

“Peony!” David cried, and she felt his eyes searching out the change in her.

“My name is Clear Peace,” she told him, smiling. No, she would not be afraid to smile.

“I think of you always as Peony,” David replied.

She did not answer this. “Where is your son?” she asked.

They were walking side by side now, she quieting her heart, her fingers busy with her rosary. She had forgotten how tall he was, how strong. The air of youth was gone, and he was a man powerful and grave. She took pride in him without feeling sin, and she looked up at him and met his eyes again. “You have not changed so much,” he said abruptly. “Well — except for your hair.”

“I have changed very much,” she said cheerfully. “Now take me to the child.”

“Ah, my son,” he sighed.

So they quickened their steps and went into the rooms where David and his two elder sons now lived. Each boy when he had reached the age of seven had left his mother’s courts and come to live with his father, and David led Peony into his room and there in his own bed lay the sick boy. He was no longer a child — that Peony saw at once. His tall slender frame lay outstretched on the bed. He was breathing but choking at every breath, and his face was flushed and his eyes were closed.

Peony took his wrist between her fingers and felt the pulse too swift to count. “We have no time to waste!” she exclaimed. “There is poisoned mucus in his throat.”

Now Peony, as all the nuns must, had been much with the sick, and she knew a disease had fallen upon the city this year, borne hither upon evil winds from the north. So she ordered a servant to bring a lamp with a strong wick, and another to cut a length of soft new bamboo and bring it to her. While she waited she dipped cloths in hot water and bound them about the boy’s throat to warm his muscles. As soon as she had the thin bamboo tube in her fingers, she bade David hold the boy hard, and set a manservant to hold his feet. Then delicately pressing the thumb and finger of her left hand to his jaw, she forced open his mouth and she put down the tube and sucked on it slowly. The boy choked and struggled but she persevered until a clot came up into the tube and he fell back with a great gasp.

“Burn this tube in fire,” she told the servant. “It is full of poison. And bring me wine to give him.”

She stood watching and motionless until the wine was brought and she poured some of it into the boy’s throat, and then she washed her own mouth with the wine, too, and spat it out into a silver cuspidor that stood by the bed.

“He is better!” David exclaimed with joy.

“He will live,” Peony said.

Nevertheless she did not leave the bedside until near dark, when the laws of the nunnery said she must return. The next day she came back, and every day indeed until the lad was well again.

By that time she knew that she must come often. David needed her sorely, for he was perplexed by growing children and impetuous sons and too many servants who were lazy and disobedient, and harassed because his own prosperous business took him much away. Peony saw clearly the years ahead when sons and daughters must be betrothed and weddings planned and all the life of a great and busy house be carried on to other generations. And she could come safely, for David loved his wife. This Peony saw with lingering pain. Indeed, she asked herself, why should there be any pain? Had she not brought Kueilan into this house? It was not Kueilan who had sent her out of it. The marriage she had fostered had flowered and borne seed. Between David and Kueilan now there was the close fleshly bond of house and home and children and prosperity, and all their life was entwined together. Was this not what she had hoped would be?

The restlessness in David was gone. He had forgotten, or so it seemed to her, that there had ever been a life in this house different from his own. Even the vestiges of his mother had been taken away. The scroll above the table in the great hall was gone and instead a painting hung there of crags and clouds and pines. By whose command this was done Peony did not ask, but there it was, and it signified the change in the house — yes, and in David, too. He was content.

So Peony came and went through many years, and she met David and Kueilan as equals, and as time went on as something more than equal. They came to lean on her and to wait for her advice, and she spoke with authority in their house.

When Peony had been for ten years the nun named Clear Peace, the Mother Abbess died. During those years Peony had grown to such a place of reverence that when the old abbess had been buried, she was chosen by the nuns to take her place as mother abbess. She had less time then to visit David’s house, for she had her own house of women to govern, and she did it wisely, without casting down the spirit or wounding the heart of any creature, even to the lowliest kitchen nun.

Now followed the years when Peony and David came to perfect understanding. She, being Mother Abbess, was free to go out as she liked, and none could breathe against her name. Neither was she any longer young. David’s two elder sons were married and their wives and children lived in his house, and the next one was betrothed. His eldest daughter married young into a Chinese house, and his sons’ wives were all Chinese.

It might have been forgotten that this house was anything but Chinese except that David’s fourth son grew up so different from the others that he reminded his father now and then of what his ancestors had been. Hothearted, impetuous, excitable, strong, this fourth son kept the household in turmoil. Peony laughed at him and loved him best of all, and in some strange fashion he became the son of her childless heart.

“Leave him to me,” she told David one day when the father and son had quarreled again, as they did so often. “I understand him better than you do — because he is more like you than you know.”

“I was never like this young fool!” David protested.

To this Peony only smiled.

So the years passed, and as the three, Peony, David, and Kueilan, grew old, each year was better than the last. Between the two wiser ones Kueilan was treated as a dear and older child, and they made much of her and laughed a little over her head. She allowed herself to be spoiled and she used her tongue to berate them sometimes and she pouted when they laughed at her, but she leaned upon their love.

It was a prosperous house, and David was one of the city’s honored elders and Peony was its wise woman. Their age fell gently upon them all.

In the city, the synagogue was now a heap of dust. Brick by brick the poor of the city had taken the last ruin of the synagogue away. The carvings were gone, too, and there remained at last only three great stone tablets, and of these three, then only two. These two stood stark under the sky for a long time, and then a Christian, a foreigner, bought them.

This made an uproar in the city. The son of David’s fourth son, surnamed Chao, had sold the stones. Upon his head the wrath of the city’s governor fell. “How is it you, unfilial son, have sold the stones of your ancestors to a Christian foreigner?” the governor demanded. “He must return them, lest he take them away from our country to his own and the dead of your house rise up to reproach us.” And he ordered his guards to throw this Chao into jail.

But Chao had the blood of Madame Ezra still strong in him and he shouted through the bars, “Though you heap a fortune on me, I will not ask this Christian to give back the stones! They belonged to our religion, which has come to an end in this land, but his religion sprang from ours and let him keep the stones.”

Now this Chao was supported by all that family of Chao which had sprung from the loins of David ben Ezra, and they pointed out to the governor of the city that for scores of years the stones had stood under snow and rain and sun until they were cracked, and none had protected them. Why then should there be complaint if they were sold?

There was no one to make compromise until it was remembered in the city that the Mother Abbess had known the family well, and so the governor sent his messengers to her and she received them at the gate of the nunnery, since it was the law that no man could step beyond the threshold.

Peony was very old now, but her mind was clear and cool and she heard the messengers. Then still standing she gave out wisdom, and these were her words:

“This one surnamed Chao was a lively child and he grew into the man you know. It is his nature to spend his life in the jail unless a way is found for him to come out without leaving his pride behind him. I knew his father before him and his father before that. I will tell you the way: The foreigner shall keep these sacred stones he has bought but he shall not take them from our city. Let him set them before his own temple, and let him build a pavilion over them to preserve them for the generations to come.”

The men looked at one another and scratched their jaws and acknowledged that the Mother Abbess was wise indeed, and they thanked her and went away.

Even as Peony had said it was done. There in the new temple the stones stand to this day, under the shelter of the pavilion. Upon them are carved the ancient words “The Temple of Purity and Truth,” and beneath the words are carved the history of the Jews and their Way, and it is there said, “The Way has no form or figure, but is made in the image of the Way of Heaven, which is above.”

When Peony had returned to her cell she pondered long. Her memory brought back to life all the story of the House of Ezra, in which her own life had been entwined by some chance, for some purpose she did not understand, except that she knew that whatever happened was Heaven’s will. That strong and powerful family, the seed of Israel and Ezra and David, were they one day to be no more, even as the synagogue was gone, which their ancestors had made for a temple of their God? Had she done evil when she had enticed David away from Leah to marry Kueilan?

Long she pondered, and as often happened to her in her great age, the answer came to her. She had not done wrong, for nothing was lost. “Nothing is lost,” she repeated. “He lives again and again, among our people,” she mused. “Where there is a bolder brow, a brighter eye, there is one like him; where a voice sings most clearly, there is one; where a line is drawn most cleverly to make a picture clear, a carving strong, there is one; where a statesman stands most honorable, a judge most just, there is one; where a scholar is most learned, there is one; where a woman is both beautiful and wise, there is one. Their blood is lively in whatever frame it flows, and when the frame is gone, its very dust enriches the still kindly soil. Their spirit is born anew in every generation. They are no more and yet they live forever.”