Peony

II

PEONY FACED DAVID. “YOU!” she cried with soft ferocity. “Not to tell me!” He was fleeter of foot than she, and wile had to get her first to the gate. Once he had looked back and had seen her, and instantly she seemed to give up the chase and had slipped into a side alley of the immense compound. He looked behind him again, and not seeing her, he had smiled triumphantly and had slowed his steps. Then suddenly she was ahead of him in a passageway, and he knew he was outwitted. She stood, her hands outspread to catch him and hold him. He stopped just short of her, folded his arms, and looked down into her reproachful eyes.

“I am not bound to you!” he declared.

Her small lovely face quivered, flushed, and wilted before his gaze like a smitten flower. “No,” she said in a little voice. “It is only I who am bound to you. And — and — you are quite right. You need not tell me — anything.”

He was instantly remorseful. “Now, Peony,” he argued. “I will tell you — but only if I am not forced.”

“It is wrong of me,” she agreed. “I will never do it again. See — you are free!”

She locked her hands behind her back. He put out his arms but she evaded them and stepped aside, and then turned and ran from him. Now it was he who pursued and she who fled … How she loved to run! It was her luck to be bondmaid in this house of foreigners. Had she been in a Chinese house her feet would have been bound small as soon as it was sure she was to be pretty, so that if a son of the house were to love her and want her for a concubine, she would not shame the family by having feet like a servant’s. She ran on, laughing at the sound of him running behind her. He was laughing, too, but they muted their laughter in the secret way of their childhood. He caught her, as he always did, as she knew he would, and she pushed him and twisted herself free — almost, but not quite. His arms were strong. Then her acute ear, quick to hear footsteps and voices, warned her that they were seen.

“Young Master,” she cried loudly. “You must not take your life!”

He dropped his arms, but it was too late. Madame Ezra had seen them.

“Peony!” she said sharply. “You forget yourself!”

“I was holding him lest he throw himself into the well,” she faltered.

“Nonsense!” Madame Ezra retorted. But she wavered. Did the girl lie or was she indeed holding him against death?

David laughed “She’s lying, Mother,” he said robustly. “We were only playing a game.”

Madame Ezra was not pleased. “It is time you stopped playing games with Peony,” she said coldly. She was less pleased than usual to see how beautiful her son looked at this moment. The high color and bold bearing in which she took her secret delight now alarmed her. And Peony, too, was growing dangerously pretty.

“Make yourself ready,” she said shortly to the girl. “You must accompany me to the house of the Rabbi. And you, David, should be at your books.”

She walked firmly down the passageway toward her own rooms. David made a grimace and shrugged his shoulders, and Peony answered with lifted eyebrows and a sigh. Then her little face took on its look of sweetest coaxing. She glanced at Madame Ezra’s back and lingered to put a small hand, flower light, upon David’s arm.

“You will tell me all about her?”

He smiled gloriously, and she smiled back, a tender smile, the same smile, or so it seemed, that he had seen so often upon her face when she looked up at him.

“Everything,” he promised.

They parted and Peony went to her room to prepare for the duty of going with Madame Ezra. It was a small room, set in a tiny court of its own, but opening into Wang Ma’s court, which in turn opened upon a dim mossy passage into Madame Ezra’s own rooms. This little room in which Peony lived had once belonged to a concubine, three generations back, a secret love, scarcely acknowledged, of Ezra’s own great-grandfather. Here, too, Wang Ma herself had lived before she was married to Old Wang by Ezra’s own father. The room had stood empty while Peony was a child, too young to be alone, but when she was fifteen it had been given her. It was a pretty little room, the walls whitewashed and the gray tiles of the floor scrubbed silvery clean. Upon the facing walls on either side of her bed Peony had hung two pairs of scrolls, pictured with the flowers of spring and summer, the bright leaves of autumn, and the snowy pines of winter. These she had painted herself. She had sat in the schoolroom with David and his tutor for many years, her duty to fetch them hot tea and to clean their brushes and grind ink, and she had learned to read and write. This learning, added to her own graceful talent, had made her able to turn a verse as well as David could himself. Thus on the scroll for spring she had written in two long lines of brushed tracery:

The peach flowers bloom upon the trees,

Not knowing whether the frosts will kill them.

Upon the mimosa branches of the summer scroll she wrote:

The hot sun burns, the thunder

drums across the sky.

The cicadas sing endlessly, unheeding.

Under the scarlet maple leaves she wrote:

The red leaves fall, and all the court is still.

I tread the leaves and under my feet they die.

Beneath the snow-covered pines she wrote two more lines:

Snow covers the living and the dead,

The green pine tree, the perished flowers.

These four poems she read very often, wondering how she could improve them. Whether she would ever be able to make them better she did not know. But at present they reached to the bottom of her heart and made her want to cry.

She moved now in haste to put on a plain dark coat and trousers, to take the peach blossoms from her hair, to put off her gold bracelets. She looked into the small old mirror of her dressing case and rubbed a little rice powder into her skin and touched her lips faintly with red cream. Her hair she made always in a long braid, as all bondmaids wore their hair, signifying that they were not daughters of the house, but at home she kept the braid twisted into a knot over her ear. Now she let it down and brushed the straight black fringe above her eyebrows.

This done, she made haste through the passageways until she came to Madame Ezra’s court. Wang Ma was putting the last touch upon Madame Ezra’s costume. It was rich and individual, and Madame Ezra thought it was entirely Jewish. She did not know that in the generations during which her family had lived in China touches of embroidery at sleeve and throat, folds in the skirt, the twist of buttons and braid, had crept into the costume of her grandmothers.

Peony paused at the door and gave a slight cough and prepared her smile. Madame Ezra did not turn. Usually she was voluble and kindly to her serving maids, but in the last few days, while her mind had been busy with the Passover and all her being was renewed in the faith of her ancestors, she had not been pleased with the intimacy she perceived between Peony and David. True, the girl had been bought as a companion as well as a servant for the solitary little boy he had been, but the years had passed too quickly. She reproached herself that she had not taken heed earlier that they were now grown, her son a man, and Peony a woman. She was inclined at this moment to feel aggrieved and to be harsh toward Peony, who should have understood the change by instinct.

All of this Peony perfectly comprehended, and she stood with patient grace, silent until Madame Ezra might choose to speak. When a gold hairpin slipped from Wang Ma’s fingers she sprang forward as lithely as a kitten, picked it up, and herself put it into Madame Ezra’s hair. In so doing she caught her mistress’s eye in the mirror and smiled. Madame Ezra gazed severely into the wide black eyes of the little bondmaid, and then after a second or two she yielded her own smile.

“You are a naughty child,” she said. “I am very angry with you.”

“Ah, why, Mistress?” Peony asked sadly. Then with her quick frankness she went on, “No, do not tell me — I know! But you are quite wrong, Old Mistress. I know my place in this house. I want only to serve you, my lady. What you bid me do, I will do. What home have I except this house? Can I dare to disobey you?”

She was so pretty, so pleading, so yielding, that Madame Ezra could not but be mollified. It was true that Peony was entirely dependent upon her, and though she knew as well as ever that underneath all the gentleness and sweetness there was something hard and prudent, yet, she reasoned, Peony could scarcely destroy her own welfare. If indeed there were a youthful attachment between the bondmaid and David, Peony would not yield to it if it meant the loss of everything else — as it would, Madame Ezra said firmly to herself. If ever she saw proof that there was more between David and Peony than there should be between a young man and a serving maid, that day she would marry Peony to a farmer.

As well as though she had spoken, Peony knew the thoughts inside Madame Ezra’s handsome head. She had learned so thoroughly the habit of such discovery that she had only to be still, to empty her own mind, to wait, and to receive, and soon into her brain would come on little creeping mouse feet the thoughts of others. To be married to a farmer was the common fate of bondmaids who went beyond their station. She had even less hope in this house than in a Chinese home. The Jews did not take concubines, Madame Ezra had often declared — not the good Jews, at least. Their god, Jehovah, forbade it.

When Madame Ezra did not answer her, she slipped back quickly, and then followed her mistress to the gate. A few minutes later she was in her plain sedan, riding along the street behind Madame Ezra’s own satin-curtained one. She looked through the little pane set into the front curtain and saw a small square block of the street straight ahead. The street was as it had always been, through her life and through the centuries before she was born. It was a wide street, but however wide it might be, it was always crowded with people. On both sides low buildings of brick and stone stood open. They were shops of many kinds, but behind them were homes where men and women and their children lived together, happily or not, but in security. The street was shadowy and cool, for the shopkeepers had stretched mats over their thresholds woven of slit reeds over a framework of bamboo. Water carriers had slopped their wooden buckets as they went, and the wet stones of the cobbled street threw off coolness. Children ran and crawled everywhere, weaving between the people. Housewives bargained with vendors of fresh vegetables and lifted live fish from great tubs, and men went their way to teashops and business. Everywhere there was life, good common life, but she had no part in it, Peony thought sadly.

While her eyes watched the scene she knew so well, her thoughts were busy with herself. The years had passed too quickly, even for her. They had been happy years and good ones, and she had dreaded womanhood and change. She had felt almost a daughter in the house, but not quite, and in the last few days, during the strange foreign feast, she had realized she was alien to this family that had bought her. Compel her mind as she might, she could not remember her own mother’s face or her father’s voice. A castaway child, stolen perhaps from her home, or sold, she had been sold again.

“Who sold me to you, Lady?” she had once asked Madame Ezra.

“A dealer in children,” Madame Ezra had replied.

“Had he many like me?” she had asked next.

“He had twenty little girls, and two boys,” Wang Ma had put in. “I wonder, Lady, that you did not get a boy for our young master.”

“My son’s father wanted the girl,” Madame Ezra had replied. “I believe he took a fancy to Peony because she had such big eyes. You were very thin, child. I remember you ate until we were frightened.”

Riding along in the crowded street, high on men’s shoulders, Peony considered her fate. Outside the house of Ezra she knew no one, she had not a friend. All were strangers to her as were these passers on the street. Tears brimmed her eyes. Where could she ever go to find friends or family? Therefore must she stay where she was and cling to the only house she knew.

I have no one, she thought plaintively.

And then she denied this with the hard truthfulness that was her secret heart. She was lying to herself. She wanted to stay in the house of Ezra because she could never bear to leave David. “David” she called him in her heart and would always so call him, however she taught her lips to say “Master.”

I love him, she thought. I would not go, no matter what was given me in exchange for him.

Thus she declared herself to her own heart. With truth, a clear peace descended upon her. She knew now what she wanted and would have. There remained only the matter of how to get it and keep it.

The house of the Rabbi was next to the synagogue on the Street of the Plucked Sinew. Long ago the street had been so named because of the mysterious Jewish rite of plucking the sinew from flesh before it could be eaten. The Chinese called the synagogue The Temple of the Foreign God. But the Jews called it The Temple of God. Once passers-by had wondered at the sounds of weeping that came from within. The weeping had almost ceased as the years went on, and then the only sounds that came from the synagogue were the long, slow, wailing chants one day in seven. Even the sound of the chanting had grown weaker as more years passed, and now those who passed by had to stop and listen, if they were to hear the voices within the heavy closed doors. The very building was falling into slow ruin. The typhoons of each summer tore at the cornices and the eaves, and when stones fell they were not replaced.

The same decay was creeping into the house of the Rabbi, which was near the synagogue. Moss grew between the flagstones of the court through which Madame Ezra and Peony walked while their sedans waited at the gate. Old Wang had been sent ahead to announce Madame Ezra’s visit, and now he met them at the door of the guest hall.

“The Teacher was asleep, Mistress,” he explained. “The young lady, his daughter, was in the kitchen alone, and she ran to comb her hair and change her garments. She begged me to ask you to seat yourself. She will come quickly with her father.”

Madame Ezra inclined her head and stepped over the rotting doorsill and into the guest hall. It was called a hall, although actually it was only a small room set with common furniture. But it was clean and Leah had put some white scented lilies into a brown jar on the table. No tea was served in this house, for it was a Chinese fashion. Madame Ezra sat down and motioned Peony to a stool.

“Sit down, child,” she said. “You need not stand while we are alone. And you, Old Wang, may return home to your work.”

Old Wang bowed and went away, and Madame Ezra waited in the silent little room. Since she did not speak, Peony did not either. The young girl sat gracefully erect upon the wooden stool, her small hands clasped in her lap. She knew perfectly how to sit at ease, waiting, her look pleasant and yielding. There was no impatience or urgency in her bearing. When in a few minutes they heard shuffling footsteps, she rose and took her place behind the chair on which Madame Ezra sat.

Thus they were when the faded blue linen curtain in the doorway was pushed aside and Leah came in leading her father, the old Rabbi. He walked with a long staff in his right hand, his left arm leaning upon Leah’s shoulder. The Rabbi had been tall in his youth, far above the height of the average man, and he was still tall, in spite of his aged stoop. He wore the robes of his people this morning as he always did, and though they were patched, they were clean. Snow-white, too, was his long beard, and his skin was clean and fair, in spite of his wrinkles.

“My daughter,” the Rabbi said to Madame Ezra.

“I have waked you, Father,” Madame Ezra replied. She rose and went forward to meet the old man, and he touched her hand delicately and quickly and then her head, in blessing. Leah led him to the chair opposite that in which Madame Ezra had been sitting.

“Please sit down, Aunt,” Leah said, and when Madame Ezra had sat down, she moved a high stool near to her father. Then doubtfully she looked at Peony. “You — will you sit down?” she asked.

Peony inclined her head sweetly. “Thank you, Young Lady, I must be ready to serve my mistress,” she replied softly.

Leah sat down. Nothing could have marked more clearly than this the change from her childhood, when she and Peony had been two little girls, playing children’s games with David, and now, when one was a bondmaid and the other the young mistress of her father’s house.

“I should have waked long ago,” the Rabbi said in a voice surprisingly strong for his age. “But the truth is, daughter, that our Passover feast rouses sad memories in me and I lie awake in the night, sorrowing. These poor eyes—” he touched his blind eyes, “can still weep, even though they can no longer see.”

Madame Ezra sighed. “Do we not all weep together in our exile?”

“I grow old,” the Rabbi went on, “and my son is too young to take my place. Where is Aaron, Leah?”

“He went out early this morning, Father, and he has not come back,” Leah replied.

“Did he say where he was going?” the Rabbi asked.

“No, Father.”

“But you should have asked,” the Rabbi insisted.

“He did not want to tell me, Father,” Leah said gently.

Against the spare faded figure of the old man, the beauty of Leah was startling. The pure spring sunshine fell upon the tile floor in a square of pure light, and it lit her beauty into vividness. She was slender but rounded, strong in her looks, and rich in her coloring, and yet a vague timidity lent a modesty to her bearing that was almost childlike. Her full lips were red this morning, and her eyes were nearly perfect in their shape and in their deep brown coloring, the lashes long and curling, and the brows dark. Her hair was curling, too, and today she had tied it back from her face with a strip of narrow red satin at the nape of her neck. Her dress was a simple robe of coarse white linen. It fell to her feet and was girdled about her slender waist with a wide red strip of the same satin that bound her hair. The sleeves were short and her creamy arms were bare.

Peony under the cover of her straight lashes watched this beauty with appreciation and wonder. Her mind played now about the beautiful foreign girl with question and doubtful answer. When — or if — Leah came into the house of Ezra, as David’s wife, would she be shrewd to see all that went on under that ample roof? Would she protest and forbid, would she lead David away again into the dreams of his own people?

“Aaron should not leave without telling you where he goes, Father,” Madame Ezra was saying.

“He is young,” the Rabbi sighed.

“Not too young to remember his duty,” Madame Ezra said firmly. “He is the only one to follow after you, Father, and he must remember his duty to his people. If he fails, there will be none left to lead us home when the time comes.”

“Oh, that it might come in my lifetime!” the old rabbi mourned.

“But we must remain ready, even though it does not,” Madame Ezra said earnestly. “The synagogue should be repaired, Father, and we should revive the remnant of our people. As it is, our men are forgetting and our children never know our heritage. You should give Aaron the task of collecting the funds for the repairs. A good idea, Father — and I will promise five hundred pieces of silver as the beginning.”

“Ah, if all our people were like you,” the old rabbi replied. “But it is a good idea, eh, Leah? Aaron could busy himself with it and it would give him something to do.”

“Yes, Father,” Leah said doubtfully. She looked down into the pool of brightness about her feet.

These strange foreign people, Peony was thinking, the beautiful old man, the beautiful girl, even Madame Ezra handsome and stately, all burning from within! And why did their eyes glow and their faces grow rapt and their voices so grave while they spoke? Some spirit came out of them and enveloped them in a mystic unity that shut her out. Her downcast eyes fell on Leah’s hands clasped loosely over her knees. They were like a boy’s hands, the fingers square at the ends, strong and rough. Peony looked down at her own little hands as they rested on the back of Madame Ezra’s chair — soft, small, narrow hands, the fingers pointed as a girl’s fingers should be. Leah’s hands were like Madame Ezra’s, except that Madame’s were not workworn. They were smooth and plump and she wore rings on the first fingers of each hand and on each thumb. Leah wore no rings.

“Yet I did not come to talk about the synagogue,” Madame Ezra was saying.

The Rabbi inclined his silvery head. A small black skullcap covered the crown of it, but his hair curled about its edges.

“What then, my daughter?” he asked courteously.

“I do not know whether Leah should stay or go while I speak,” Madame Ezra said, looking at the girl kindly.

Leah rose. “I will go.”

“No,” Madame Ezra decided abruptly. “Why should you? You are not a child and we are not Chinese. It is quite permissible to speak before you of your marriage.”

Leah sat down again hesitating. Peony watched her sidewise from under her lashes. At the word “marriage” a dark rich red flooded up from Leah’s straight neck and shoulders; it crept up her cheeks and into the roots of her hair. Seeing it, Peony felt the blood drain down from her own face and her heart began to beat slowly and heavily. The talk would go on before her, as a matter of course, for who would consider whether a bondmaid had a heart? Madame Ezra, in her shrewdness, might think it well for her to hear of David’s marriage. Peony dropped her head low and stood like a small image of marble, her hands folded together upon the back of Madame Ezra’s chair.

“Marriage,” Madame Ezra repeated. “It is time, Father, to speak of our children. My son is no longer a child.”

“Leah is only eighteen,” the Rabbi said doubtfully. “Besides, what would I do without her?”

“To be eighteen is to be a woman,” Madame Ezra retorted, “and you cannot keep her forever. We can hire a good Jewish woman to take her place. I will see to it. I know just the one — Rachel, the daughter of Eli and that woman he married—”

“A Chinese,” the Rabbi said still more doubtfully.

“Only partly,” Madame Ezra said firmly. “It is hard to find servants now who are purely of our people. I myself use only Chinese. It is better not to mix them. But to take Leah’s place here, of course, we must have a woman who understands the rites and can help you. Rachel knows enough for that. And her husband is dead.”

“He was a Chinese,” the Rabbi said plaintively.

“It is as much as we can do to get our sons married to women of our people nowadays,” Madame Ezra replied. “That is why I want my son married now. Leah, you must help me!”

A look of trouble came into Leah’s deep eyes. “How can I help you?” she murmured.

“You must come and visit me,” Madame Ezra said. “It is natural and right that at this age, when you are entering womanhood, you should come and stay with me, your mother’s friend. We were like sisters, she and I, and I have long had it in my mind that you should come to me.”

They were interrupted by a sound at the door. Aaron came in impetuously and then stopped, confounded by their unexpected presence. He gave a snigger of embarrassment.

“Aaron!” Leah whispered distressfully.

“My son!” the Rabbi cried. “How fortunate! Now we can talk with you. Aaron, sit down here, my son, near me.”

The Rabbi felt for a chair, but Aaron did not move toward him. He took off his turban and wiped his hot forehead. It was Leah that rose and moved a chair near to the father and motioned to her brother. He sat down, trying to control his rapid breathing.

“Why have you been running?” the Rabbi asked.

“Because I wanted to,” Aaron answered sullenly. He was a slight pallid young man and his eyes were small and black and set close on either side of a thin hooked nose. His curly black hair hung untidily from under his turban.

Madame Ezra gazed at him with dislike. “You do not look as the Rabbi’s son should,” she now said majestically. “You look as common as anybody’s son.”

Aaron did not answer. He threw her instead a shrewd peevish glance, sharp with hostility.

“Aaron!” Leah murmured again.

“Be quiet!” he commanded her in a fierce whisper.

“My son, do you not give greeting to our guests?” the Rabbi asked.

“Let us go on with our conversation,” Madame Ezra said.

“Yes, yes,” the Rabbi murmured. “Aaron, Madame Ezra wants Leah to come and stay with her for a while.”

“Who’s to look after us?” Aaron inquired rudely.

“Rachel will come,” Madame Ezra replied.

“Do you mind if I go, Aaron?” Leah asked half timidly.

“Why should I mind? Do as you like,” he replied. His eyes, roving about the room, now fell upon the silent Peony, and there they fastened themselves. She felt his coarse gaze and did not lift her eyelids.

Then Madame Ezra saw it and was angered. She rose, interposing herself between the two. “Let us decide it so, Father. Leah can come to me tomorrow. I will send a sedan for her, and at an earlier hour Rachel will come. Leah, you can tell her everything to be done. And do not set a day for your return — I may keep you for a long time.”

Madame Ezra smiled and nodded to Leah, who had risen when she rose. Then bowing her farewell to the Rabbi, she left the room without giving heed to Aaron. The Rabbi rose too, and leaning upon Aaron’s arm, he followed Madame Ezra to the gate.

Leah walked on his other side, and Peony went ahead to prepare the chair carriers.

Thus Madame Ezra returned to her house. She was ill pleased with her own thoughts, that Peony could see. She was very silent when she had reached her own rooms, and she gave brief commands for the preparation of the small east court for Leah. Peony stood to receive these commands, and when she had heard them she turned and went to fulfill them, only to hear Madame Ezra call her again from the gate of the court.

“Young girls have natural instincts,” Madame Ezra said to Peony. “Do you prepare those two rooms as you can imagine Leah would like to have them prepared, with the scrolls and vases, flowers and perfumes, that she will most enjoy.”

“But Madame, how do I know what a young foreign lady will most enjoy?” Peony inquired. She met Madame Ezra’s fixed stare with a wide and innocent gaze.

“Try to imagine,” Madame Ezra said dryly, and the innocent gaze flickered and fell.

Outside the gate, in the mossy passageway, Peony stood still for a full minute. Then she moved with decision. She went to her room and in a few swift movements she took off her somber street garments and put on her soft peach-pink silk jacket and trousers. She washed her hands and face in perfumed water and coiled her braid again over one ear and thrust a jeweled pin into the knot. In the other ear she hung a long pearl earring. Cheeks and lips she touched with vermilion, and she dusted her face with the fine rice powder. Then she slipped through the secret passages of the old house that went winding into the courtyards where David lived near to his father.

The house had been built hundreds of years ago for a great and rich Chinese family, and generations had added courts and passageways to suit their needs and their loves. Many of these were closed now, and left unused, but Peony in her exploring and David in his curiosity had found them, until, as the years of their childhood passed, all were familiar to them, and these ways underlay the upper surfaces of the house in a secret pattern for a secret life. The house was Peony’s world, where she lived with the family to which she belonged, and yet where she felt that she lived most often alone, passing hours at a time in some forgotten overgrown courtyard, dreaming and musing. But she knew that until now she had never been really alone because there had always been David. Whether he was in her presence or not, he had been always in her dreams and musings.

As she went her secret way, she was bewildered with fear. Well she knew and had always known that someday he must be given a wife. But she had not believed that this wife could separate them. They would go on, the closeness of man and woman scarcely heeded, scarcely noticed, in the family life. But if Leah were brought here, would Leah allow this to be? Could anything be hidden from the foreign eyes of that young girl? Would she not demand the whole of David, body and mind and spirit? His conscience she would create in her own image, and she would teach him to worship the god of his fathers, and he would cleave to Leah only and there would be no room for any other in his heart. Now Peony feared Leah indeed, for she saw that Leah was a woman strong enough to win a man entire and hold him so. Peony’s eyes swam with tears. She must go to David instantly, win him again, renew every tie. Impetuously, daring to disobey even Madame Ezra out of her fear, she ran silently upon her satin-shod feet into the library, where David at this hour should be at his books.

She found him at his writing table, his books pushed aside. When she stood in the doorway he was poring over a sheet of paper, pointing his camel’s-hair brush at his lips. He did not see her and she waited, now rosy and smiling, ready for his lifted eyes. When he made no sign, she laughed softly and he looked up, his eyes thoughtful and far away. Then she went to him, and taking her white silk handkerchief from her sleeve, she leaned and wiped his inky lips.

“Oh, what lips!” she murmured. “Look!”

She showed him the stain on the handkerchief, but he was still far away. “Tell me a rhyme for ‘lily,’ ” he commanded.

“Silly,” she replied with prompt mischief.

“Silly yourself!” he retorted. But he put the brush down.

“What are you writing?” she inquired.

“A poem,” he replied.

She snatched the paper, he snatched it back, and between them it was torn in two. “Now see what you have done!” he cried furiously. “It’s the fifth time I have copied it!”

“For your tutor, I suppose?” she cried. She began to read the torn poem in a high, sweet voice.

“I came upon a garden unaware,

A flower-scented space,

But all the flowers did abase Themselves before a lily…”

“Why a lily?” she demanded. “I thought you said she looked like a fawn. The same girl cannot look like a fawn and a lily.”

“She isn’t exactly like a lily — she’s too small. I wanted to say orchid, a small golden one, but there is nothing that rhymes with orchid.”

Peony crumbled the paper in her hand. “There is no use in your writing poems to her, whatever she is,” she declared.

“You wicked little thing!” he cried. He grasped her hand and forced the wad of paper out of it and smoothed it. Then he looked at her, remembering her words. “What do you mean?” he demanded.

She paused and then said firmly, “Leah is coming.”

“Here?”

She was pleased with the horror in his eyes, and she nodded. “She is coming tomorrow — and she is really very beautiful. I never saw before how beautiful she is. Why not keep the poem? ‘Lily’ would suit her.”

“What is she coming for?” he asked, biting his underlip.

“You know — you know,” she answered. “She is coming to be married to you!”

“Stop teasing,” he commanded. He stood up and seized both her wrists and held her firmly. “Tell me — did my mother say so — to her?”

Peony nodded. “I went with your mother to the Rabbi’s house and I heard every word. They are going to rebuild that temple — the temple to your foreign god — and Leah is coming here to live.”

“If my mother thinks—” David began.

“Ah, she will do what she likes,” Peony declared. “She’s stronger than you. She will make you marry Leah!”

“She cannot — I won’t — my father will help me—”

“Your father is not as strong as she is.”

“Both of us together!”

“Ah, but there are two of them, too,” she reminded him triumphantly. “Leah and your mother — they’re stronger than you and your father.”

She felt a strange wish to hurt him, to make him suffer so that he would ask her help. Then she would help him. She looked up into his eyes and saw doubt creep into them.

“Peony, you must help me!” he whispered.

“Leah is beautiful,” she said stubbornly.

“Peony,” he pleaded, “I love someone else. You know it!”

“The daughter of Kung Chen. What’s her name?”

“I don’t even know her name,” he groaned.

“But I do,” Peony said.

She had him now in her power. He dropped her wrists. “What is her name?” he demanded.

“You were nearly right — to want to call her ‘orchid’,” she said demurely. “Her name is Kueilan.”

“Precious Orchid,” he repeated. “Ah, it was my instinct!”

“And if you wish, I will take the poem to her myself — when you have finished it,” Peony said sweetly. He opened the drawer of the table and drew out a fresh sheet of paper.

“Now quickly help me with the last line,” he commanded her.

“Let’s not have any flowers,” she suggested. “Flowers are so common.”

“No flowers,” he said eagerly. “What would she like instead?”

“If it were I,” Peony said, “I would like to remind someone — the one I loved — of — of a fragrance — caught upon the winds of night — or dew at sunrise—”

“Dew at sunrise,” he decided.

He settled to his paper and brush, and she touched his cheek with her palm.

“While you write,” she said tenderly, “I will go and do something your mother bade me to do.”

He did not hear her, or know that she had left him alone. At the door she looked back. When she saw him absorbed, her red lips grew firm and her eyes sparkled like black jewels, and she went away to fulfill the task of preparing Leah’s rooms.

How hard she was upon the two small undermaids she summoned to help her! Nothing she did herself, until the last corner under the bed was swept, until the silken bed curtains were shaken free of dust, and the bed spread with soft quilts, the carved blackwood table dusted. Then she waved the wearied maids away, and she sat down and considered Leah.

It was in her heart to leave these rooms as they were, clean but bare. Why should she put forth her hand to more? Then she sighed. She knew herself too merciful to blame Leah, who was good. She rose, unwillingly, and went about other rooms in the house and chose from one and another pretty things, a pair of many-flowered vases, a lacquered box, a pair of scrolls, each with its painted verse beneath flying birds, a footstool made of golden bamboo, a bowl of blooming bulbs, and these she took to Leah’s rooms and placed them well.

When all was done, she stood looking about her; then, feeling duty done, she closed the doors. Outside these closed doors she paused in the court and considered. David would have his poem finished now, doubtless. Should she return to him to know his will? She went silent-footed through the courts again to David’s schoolroom and looked in. He was not there.

“David?” she called softly, but there was no answer. She tiptoed to the desk. Upon the sheet of paper he had written only a single line.

Within the lotus bud the dewdrop waited.

Then he had flung down his brush. She felt its tip — the camel’s hair was dry! Where had he gone and where had he stayed all these hours?

She looked about the empty, book-lined room, and all her perceptions, too sensitive, searched the air. Confusion — what confusion had seized him? She longed to run out, to look for him, to find him. But her life had taught her patience. She stood, controlled and still. Then she took up the brush, put on its brass cover, and laid it in its box; she covered the ink box, too, and set the slab of dried ink in its place. This done, she stood a second more, than took the paper with its unfinished poem, folded it delicately, put it in the bosom of her robe, and returned to her own room and found her embroidery. There the whole afternoon she sewed, and none came near, even to ask her if she were hungry or thirsty.