Peony

VII

THE RABBI DID NOT return to the house of Ezra. When he knew he was alone in the synagogue and that David had gone, he went into his own house. Rachel was surprised when she heard his step, and she came in from the kitchen.

“Well, Old Teacher!” she called.

“I wish to be alone,” he told her. “Send word to Madame Ezra and tell her that I will not return. And bid my son come home.”

“What of Leah?” Rachel asked.

The Rabbi considered. “Let her remain where she is,” he said.

Rachel stared at the old man. He looked exhausted to the heart. His face was white and his beard was unbrushed. His hand, clutching his staff, was trembling, and she saw a slight palsy of his head, which she had not seen before. All this alarmed her and she took him by the sleeve. “Before I go I will make you a bowl of hot millet soup, and you must drink it and rest yourself.”

So saying she led the Rabbi to his room, where she kept all ready for him. The old man yielded to her and he let his staff fall and he wiped his blind eyes on his sleeves. “Ah, it is good here,” he sighed. “I was not happy in the halls of the rich.”

“You are not happy unless you are miserable, and that is the truth about you,” Rachel said cheerfully. “Lie down, old man, and rest.”

A look of indignation made his face strong again. The Rabbi came to himself suddenly. “What have you done to my bed?” he cried. He had laid himself down on his narrow bamboo couch but now he sat up.

Rachel stood with her hands akimbo. “I put an extra quilt under the mat,” she said firmly. “Those old bones of yours with nothing under you!”

But the Rabbi rose to his feet and turned on her with his sightless eyes. “Take it away, woman!” he commanded.

Rachel shrugged her shoulders, shook her head, and made many signs of refusal that he could not see, but so loud and clear was his voice that she did not dare to say aloud that she would not obey him. At last there was nothing for her except to take the quilt away and spread the mat on the hard bamboo. Then the Rabbi lay down again, sighed, and folded his hands on his breast. “Go away, woman,” he commanded her, his deep voice as firm as ever. “Go away and leave me to the Lord.”

So Rachel went away, disapproving very much; and muttering to herself against the stubborn old saint, she put the quilt into a box. But she was angry and she did not go at once to give his message to Madame Ezra. Instead she kept everything to herself until the next day. When the Rabbi asked her whether Aaron had come home, she told a comforting lie and said that Leah had begged that he be allowed to stay for another day or two with her. The Rabbi sighed at this but said no more. He rose early the next morning, ate his millet porridge, and sat repeating to himself the pages of the Torah.

When the day wore on nearly to noon and she knew that Madame Ezra would be ready, Rachel went to give the message. She found Madame Ezra superintending the cleaning of a fish pond by the kitchen. The angry fish were swarming in tubs while two men raked the muddy bottom. Madame Ezra was scolding fish and men alike, and she was in no good temper to hear what Rachel had to tell her.

“Now what has happened?” she cried when Rachel stopped to take breath. “All was well yesterday — why has he left my house?”

“I know nothing except that the old man came home yesterday alone from the synagogue,” Rachel said.

Then Madame Ezra called Wang Ma and Peony to come in. Wang Ma knew nothing and Peony knew only that David had come home late last night with his father.

“You should have come and told me,” Madame Ezra said.

“Mistress, I thought you knew everything,” Peony replied.

There was nothing now to do but to dismiss them all, and this Madame Ezra did, except that she held Peony back to give her a command.

“Go and fetch me Leah, while I go to my room and clean myself.”

So Peony went to fetch Leah while Madame Ezra gave her last commands to the two men and went to her own court.

As for Peony, she made herself all servant, and she coughed before she entered Leah’s door, and when she heard Leah’s gentle voice, saying to come in, she went in and bowed and said only this: “My mistress asks for you to come to her.” Then she bowed and went away again, and now she went to her own room and thought for a while. What had happened between the Rabbi and David? Did Leah have a part in it?

Waiting became more than she could bear, and she went to find out what she could, by any means. She ran on noiseless feet and hid behind a great cassia tree in Madame Ezra’s court. It leaned against the window that was open, for the morning was hot and still. Hidden there, she heard Madame Ezra’s voice speaking firmly and clearly to Leah, in these words:

“How can you say that nothing has happened between you and David? I saw you with my own eyes, once, in the peach garden. Certainly you stood very close together.”

Leah’s voice came rushing softly, full of agitation. “How can I help it, Aunt, if — if — nothing more happened? That once — well, yes, we were very near.”

“All these days you have been sitting together over the Torah,” Madame Ezra cried.

“He has scarcely spoken to me.” Leah’s voice died away in this confession.

Madame Ezra flew into sudden anger. “It is your fault, Leah! You never try — you simply wait.”

“What can I do but wait?” Leah asked.

Peony listened, her black eyes sparkling, her red lips curving. Ah, then, it was not decided! David did not love Leah! Ah — but what if he did? She slipped from behind the cassia tree and ran to David’s rooms. The sitting room was empty, and she put aside the curtain and peered into his bedroom. He lay on his bed still asleep. The noon sun poured into the room. She had drawn his bed curtains last night herself when she made the room ready for night, but he had put them back behind the heavy silver hooks. He lay there in his white silk sleeping garments, his arms flung wide and his head turned toward her on the pillow.

Her heart beat with joy. It was not too late. The Rabbi was gone, and there was no betrothal. Joy ran in her veins and curved her lips and shone in her eyes and danced in her body. It was never too late for happiness.

She stole across the room and knelt by his bed. “David!” she whispered. “David!”

He woke, smiled, and stretched out his arms to her and caught her shoulders. “How dare you wake me?” he demanded, still no more than half asleep.

“It’s noon,” she whispered. “I came to tell you something — something wonderful!”

“What is it?” he demanded.

But she delayed out of sheer joy. “The sun is shining into your eyes,” she said. “Why, they’re not black — there’s gold in the bottoms of them!”

“Is that wonderful?” he asked, and he laughed aloud and waked himself with his own laughter.

“The sun shines into your mouth,” she went on, “and it is as sweet as a pomegranate.”

“For this you waked me?” he demanded. He sat up now, wide awake.

“No,” she whispered. “David, listen to me!”

She caught his hand and held it against her breast. “David, at noon—she—is going to the Buddhist temple to worship and give thanks. She has been ill.”

She felt his hand grow tense. “You did not tell me,” he said.

“I did not want to tell you,” she said. “She is well again — really. David, you can see her for yourself.”

His eyes were fixed on hers, and she went on quickly. “If you get up now I will bring you something to eat, and you can enter the side gate of the temple and meet her as she goes to the Silver Kwanyin in the South Temple.”

“But she will know I came to see her,” he said shyly.

Peony laughed. “How that will please her!” she said with mischief. She put down his hand, and rose to her feet and touched her finger to her lips. “I’ll be back with hot food.”

She ran away. Ah, but this would take quickness! She stopped only to find her purse and then she ran out of the Gate of Peaceful Escape and down the alley to the house of Kung, and there she asked for Chu Ma and found her at her noon meal. The fat old woman held a huge bowl of rice to her mouth and she pushed in the mingled rice and meats and listened to Peony.

“You must persuade her to be there, mind you, in the court of the Silver Kwanyin, and he will be there within the hour.” Peony poured this all into a breath.

“But if her mother forbids?” Chu Ma asked.

“Tell your young lady to weep, to scream, to threaten anything — tell her to say she has a pain in her breast and that she wants to pray. He sends you this.”

She emptied her purse into Chu Ma’s hands, and then tore at her own ears and took off her jade earrings. “And I give you these.”

Chu Ma put the bowl on a table and nodded and Peony flew homeward again. In a few minutes she came from the kitchen with a covered porcelain vessel full of hot rice gruel, which was always on the stoves, and a manservant followed with the small meats and salt dishes for David’s breakfast. She trusted that David had loitered even more than usual in dressing himself, and this was true. When she entered his sitting room, he had still not come in.

“Young Master!” she called.

“Shall I wear red or blue?” he called back.

“The wine red!” she replied. Blue was the color he wore to the synagogue and nothing must remind him of that now. She knew the subtle influence of colors, how gray can subdue a man’s spirit, how blue uplifts it and sends it wandering, how red, the wine red, holds it to the earth.

Soon he came out, looking so beautiful that she could have wept. His dark head was bare; above the white lining of his robe his face showed brown and red and full of health.

But she subdued herself. “Come,” she said, “there is too little time.” She uncovered the bowls as she spoke, and he sat down. He ate in silence and he pondered. Had it not been for all that happened to him yesterday he could not have yielded to Peony now. For it was not with great desire that he longed again to see Kueilan. He remembered the pretty Chinese girl with warm pleasure but not with urgency. No, he wanted to see her today at least for his own defense against himself. He knew that Leah was here, and he thought the Rabbi was still here, and he knew his mother was as strong as ever. He needed time against them, time to make up his mind, to be himself before all else. Last night on the lake had calmed him and taken the soreness from his soul. This morning he felt rested and strong and alone.

So he ate and afterward he made himself fresh again, washing his hands in a basin of perfumed water and brushing his hair, without haste, and all so slowly that Peony was half beside herself. “She will have gone, you will not see her!” she wailed. “Oh, when will there be so good a chance again!”

He teased her a while with his slowness and he pretended that he was still hungry and at last she seized the dishes and would not let him have more and he so relished laughing and playfulness again that he set off in good humor, and left Peony to take away the dishes.

Now Peony had reason enough out of love to do all she had done, but what happened next gave her hate for a reason, too.

After Rachel had spoken with Madame Ezra she went to the room that the Rabbi had used, having inquired of the way from the servants, and there she found Aaron still half asleep and barely stirring out of his bed. She told him that his father bade him come home at once, and as she did so she said to herself that it was a shame this was the Rabbi’s only son, this gangling splayfooted boy with his long narrow head and his thin crooked face and mean yellowish eyes.

Aaron heard his father’s command and he was too timid to say he would not come. Instead he asked, “Is Leah coming home, too?”

“Not today,” Rachel replied.

Then because this made him angry he muttered that his father always treated Leah softly, and he screamed at Rachel. “Get away, you old slut! Why do you stand there and stare at me?”

At this she grew angry and she said plainly, “As for me, I hope you do not come home. It will be hard work to cook food to keep you alive.”

With this she went away, and Aaron, left alone, began to pity himself and wept a little. He was loath to leave this rich house where the best of food had been given him for his father’s sake, and where no servant refused his bidding. He was angry to think he must go back to his narrow life and his lonely room. He loved neither his father nor Leah, but he feared them because they were good and he was not.

So pitying himself and angry at all, he rose, and in great sulkiness he dressed, and then he went out to the hall where the men ate, to look for his breakfast. As it chanced, his path crossed Peony’s at the court where the fish pool was. He saw her before she saw him, and she made a pretty sight in the morning sunshine. Her hair was shining black and her cheeks pink and she wore coat and trousers of pale yellow silk and she had thrust a white gardenia in her hair.

He looked right and left. No one was near. She walked with downcast head and smiled as she went. Then she felt his presence as she might have felt a snake near her foot. She lifted her head, startled, and at that moment he ran toward her, seized her in his arms, and pressed his mouth upon hers.

Never had any mouth been pressed upon Peony’s. Now she felt Aaron’s loathsome trembling hot mouth and she was faint and sick. Her head swirled and she screamed, but so great was her sickness that the scream was too small to hear. Then she felt his hand at her breast. The sickness passed, her strength returned with anger, and she fell upon Aaron with all the fury of her being. She scratched his face and tore his hair and jerked his ears and kicked him when he tried to run, and she held him by his hair with one hand and pushed his face with her other hand, clenched into a fist, all the time silent except for her hard breaths. She did not want anyone to know that the shame of his touch had fallen upon her.

At last, quite spent, she snarled at him, “Dare to touch me again, you cursed son of a hare, and I will kill you with the sword and you will die as your turtle ancestors died!”

Now Peony spoke of the sword that David had chosen out of the caravan and had hung on the wall in his own room. This sword had an exceedingly fine sharp edge, and at this moment Aaron believed that Peony could do what she said. She could not have chosen a keener threat. All the old fear and the weakness handed down to him from his fathers, and bound indeed into the Torah itself, now fell upon him. The old Rabbi was a strong man and he could enjoy the thunderings of Jehovah, but Aaron was a weak worm, and from his pitiful weak childhood he had feared and hated Jehovah, and he longed to be anything except what he was, the son of the Rabbi. When Peony called upon his ancestors he gathered his garments about him and slunk away.

Peony threw him a long look of scorn. Then she walked with firm swift footsteps to her room, and there she washed and scrubbed herself from head to foot and changed her garments and brushed her hair and perfumed herself and put on her best jewels and thrust a fresh flower in her hair. But her anger still burned in her. Now indeed she would rid the house of all who belonged to Aaron. When she was clean again she went to David’s rooms and waited, making the pretext of cleaning and dusting and mending a sandalwood fan he had broken.

Her cheeks were still pink with anger when in an hour or two David came back. She sat at the table, mending the delicate fan with a feather dipped in glue. She knew when she looked at him that he had seen Kueilan. He came in, debonair and satisfied with himself. When she saw him, she thought to herself, how smug a man looks who thinks himself beloved! But this she knew was the bitterness of her own hidden love, and she put it aside. She laid the fan carefully down and clothing herself in docility she rose to her feet. His eyes met hers in the old gaiety that she had so missed.

“Tell me,” she coaxed, knowing that he wanted to tell her every thing.

“What?” he teased.

“Did you see her?”

“Did you not tell me she would be there?” he replied.

“But she was there?”

“Suppose she wasn’t?”

To his surprise Peony suddenly began to sob.

“Now what is wrong with you?” he asked.

She shook her head and could not speak.

He came closer. “Tell me,” he urged. “Has someone hurt you?”

She nodded, still sobbing and wiping her eyes on her sleeves.

“My mother?” he asked angrily.

“It was — it was — oh, I cannot say his name!” She shook her head. She cried in a small heartbroken voice.

“A man!” David exclaimed.

She nodded. “The Rabbi’s son,” she whispered.

David stared at her for a second. Then he turned abruptly and strode toward the door of the court. But Peony ran after him. “No, no,” she cried. “Never let him know you know. It is too much shame for me.”

“What did he do?” David demanded.

“I — cannot tell you,” she faltered.

“He did not—” David began, and now the red was flaming in his cheeks.

“Oh, no, oh, no!” she cried. Then lest he think matters worse than they were, she laughed through her tears. “I beat him,” she confessed. “I took him by the hair and — and I smacked his face.”

David laughed with fierce pleasure. “I wish I had seen you! Did you bruise him, Peony? Let me go and see!”

“No, wait,” she coaxed. “Please, what I say is true. He did — he did put his mouth on mine—”

“Curse his mother!” David said suddenly.

Peony laid the little forefinger of her right hand across his lips, and tears brimmed her beautiful eyes. “I am defiled,” she whispered.

How could David refuse her comfort? He put his hands upon her shoulders and looked at her soft red lips, and she let her fingers slide away and she said in the softest voice, “Touch my lips — and make them clean!”

She swayed a little toward him, and he bent his head, trying to laugh and make a play of it, and he bent his head still lower until indeed his lips were upon hers. Never had his lips touched a woman’s mouth. This was only Peony, only his little same Peony whom he knew so well, but suddenly her lips were sweet and strange.

She drew back and her voice was quick and clear. “Thank you,” she said daintily. “Now I can forget. Tell me, Young Master, did you truly see the pretty third daughter of Kung?”

So swift was her change that he scarcely knew how to speak. All was confusion in him. The sweet new warmth that Peony had called up in him she now turned swiftly toward another. Without knowing that he was being stirred, beguiled, led to do what Peony wanted, he let his mind go back to the temple, and to the moment when he had been hidden behind the great Guardian God of the West. He saw Kueilan come in, the embroidered edge of her long skirt of soft apple-green silk sweeping the tiled floor. An old serving woman held her hand, and beside the stout strong figure the young girl had looked like a little willow tree in spring. Then he remembered her face.

“Yes,” he said slowly, “I saw her. I had forgotten how beautiful she is.”

“She is too small?” Peony prodded.

“A little thing,” David said, “not taller than you. But I like small women.”

“Her eyes — they are as big as mine?”

Now Peony’s chief beauty was her eyes. They were apricot-shaped, the lashes were straight and soft and long, and the color of the iris was a deep warm brown, not quite black. Looking into these eyes, David was constrained to remember Kueilan’s eyes, and since he had passed very near her, he said, “Hers are the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen.”

At this Peony dimpled and she put her handkerchief to her face to hide her quickening smile — and her tears. “Did you speak to her?” she asked next.

“Yes,” David said. “When she passed to go into the inner temple, she saw me.”

“And you said?” Peony hinted.

“Only that I hoped she would forgive me because I had come to see her.”

This David said very fervently and he sat down beside the table and put away all mischief. “Peony,” he said gravely, “you know I cannot marry as ordinary men do. If I choose her for my bride and not Leah, I must wound my mother and the Rabbi and perhaps even my father.”

“Your father thinks only of you,” Peony put in.

“Ah, but among our people the women are stronger than the men,” David said, “and what my mother will do, I do not know.”

“Does Leah know — of this other one?” Peony asked.

“No,” David replied. He looked rueful. “And I have given her reason to think—” He shook his head.

Peony, who had been standing all this time, now sat down opposite him at the table.

“You have let Leah think you — love her?” So Peony asked in a small frightened voice. Then she hurried on. “How can that be true? You have not spoken to her while you were learning the book. The old teacher sat between you.”

“Once, in the peach garden—” David said, blushing heartily.

“In the peach garden?” Peony echoed. “What did you do?”

“It was the day after the caravan came,” David said unwillingly. “We were all somehow excited.”

“She came to you in the peach garden?” Peony exclaimed. Her divining mind ran ahead. “And do you think she would be so bold as to come to you of her own will? Surely it was your mother who bade her come.”

David stared at her, suddenly perceiving that indeed this might be true. “If Mother—” He struck the table with his fists and Peony cried out and drew away the mended fan.

David leaned back, his eyes full of fury. “I shall tell my mother—”

But Peony looked at him over the carved fan, which she held to her face because she loved the scent of sandalwood. “Why need you say anything?” she coaxed. “Let me go to your father and tell him what you feel. Come, I will be the marriage maker for you!”

But David shook his head again. “Nevertheless, it is not honorable for me to allow Leah to remain confused,” he said. “I must think of what to say to her.”

“Say nothing,” Peony pleaded. “What is not said need never be unsaid. If it is put into words, then all is hard and fast. Oh, and she will be very bitter against you.”

“Leah bitter?” David repeated. “Ah, there you are wrong! That is what hurts me. She is so good. For her own sake — not my mother’s — I wish with all my heart that I could love her.” He broke off again, hesitated, and went on, half talking to himself, “I could have loved her, perhaps — had she simply been a woman. But she is much more.”

He thought Peony too childlike to understand what he meant, but Peony did understand and she was shrewd enough to keep silent. Leah was more than a woman — she was a people and a tradition and a past, and did David marry her he espoused the whole, and to that he must return. He could not be himself or free, were he to return, for then must he become part of the ancient whole and bear upon himself the weight of their old sorrows. But Peony did not tell him this. Instead she skipped her feet and clapped her hands and pretended to her usual childishness.

“Let me tell your father!” she begged.

And David, his young face shadowed with vague pain, smiled a little sadly. “What can my father do for me?” he inquired. “He was caught as I am now.”

“Ah, but he had no one to save him,” Peony said gently. “There was no orchid flower in his youth. Think of that little one who sits thinking of you now. Do you know she thinks of you? Ah, yes, you do! Let me tell your father!”

At last, listening to her soft voice, he nodded, and she went quickly lest he call her back. Be sure she went straight to Ezra, and she found him sleeping in his reed chair, his fan resting on his stomach and his legs outstretched. He was snoring and for a while nothing she could do would waken him. She coughed, she sang, she called in a soft voice, careful not to wake him too suddenly, lest his soul be wandering and not come back to his body. At last she spied a cricket on the stones and she picked it up by its jointed legs and put it in Ezra’s beard. There it was so dismayed that it began to squeak dolefully, and Ezra woke and rolled his head and then combed his beard with his fingers and found the cricket and threw it out.

“I saw the naughty mite leap into your beard, Master,” Peony said sweetly, “but I was afraid to wake you.”

“I never had this happen before,” Ezra said in surprise. He sat up, stretched himself, yawned, and shook his head to stir his brain. “Does it have a meaning? I must ask a geomancer.”

“It means good luck, Master,” Peony said. “Crickets come only to a safe, rich house.”

She poured a bowl of tea from the pot on the table, and this she now handed him with both hands, and then, picking up the fan from the floor where it had fallen, she began to fan him. When he seemed himself she began her news.

“Master, I must confess a fault.”

“Another one?” he asked. He yawned, rubbed the crown of his head, and smiled.

“My young master — your son, sir—” Here she paused.

Ezra was instantly alarmed. She looked too happy. Could it be possible that David had been so foolish as to return her love? It would throw the house into turmoil. A bondmaid! What would Madame Ezra do?

Peony caught the terror in his eyes and tried to smile. Well she knew what he was thinking and her heart quivered. No one, not even this good master of hers, whom she loved as the only father she knew, thought of her as more than a gentle servant, one fit for usefulness and pleasure but no more.

“Do not fear,” she said sweetly. “It is not I whom your son loves.”

This she said, knowing very well that it was within her reach to make David love her. His heart had denied Leah, and he had not yet accepted Kueilan, and into that emptiness she might have stepped, and his heart might have enclosed her. But she was too wise. Never would she be given the place of a wife, and even if she were, David’s life could have no peace. She loved him too well to see him wretched, and she had been reared in obedience to those above. None could be happy if the proportions were ignored. It was not her fate to be the daughter-in-law in this house. No, she was like the little mouse that came out of its hiding place and danced solitary in the sun. So must she find her joy alone, sheltered under the vast roof.

“Then whom does my son love?” Ezra asked sternly.

Peony lifted her head and looked at him straightly with soft eyes that seemed as honest as a child’s when she made them so.

“He still loves that little third lady in the house of Kung,” she said.

Ezra looked away from her and he did not answer. He sat pulling his beard and sighing and fingering his lips and thinking this way and that and seeing no light anywhere. He discovered only this longing inside himself, that his son might marry whom he pleased and for his happiness.

Have I not been happy with my Naomi? he inquired of his own heart.

He had been happy. If he had not loved Naomi when they were married, neither had he greatly loved any other woman. No, he had not loved Flower of Jade — not enough to give up his parents’ favor for her sake. Had David said he loved Peony, he would have chided and forbade, as his father had done in his own youth. But a daughter of the great Chinese house of Kung could not be despised. She was David’s equal in all — except in faith. Yet many Jews had married Chinese wives and they had not ceased altogether to be Jews. He would put it so to Naomi.

Now Ezra was a man who had to do a thing as soon as he thought of it, and forgetting Peony he got impetuously to his feet and went in search of his son’s mother, leaving Peony to stand and wonder how much she had done. She followed him at a little distance and took her place behind the cassia tree. As for Ezra, he found his wife in her own rooms and in a very ill humor. This he saw as soon as he came to the door, but he supposed that her mood was because of some household matter. Madame Ezra was a very shrewd good manager in her own house and she could be downcast over the theft of an egg or the breaking of a dish. She looked at Ezra coldly when he came in.

“You did not go to the shop today,” she said.

He tried to smile as he came in and sat down on the chair opposite her and across the table. “No, for I came in very late last night,” he confessed. “Kung Chen invited me to see the moon. He brought his two sons and David went with me.”

“How you look!” she exclaimed. “You are yellow as sulphur!”

“Come, come,” he retorted. “I am not so bad.”

“Blear-eyed,” she went on severely, “your hair a crow’s nest! Did David drink too much?”

“I have not seen him this morning,” Ezra said.

She pursed her lips. “I have been talking to Leah,” she said.

Ezra threw her a shrewd tender look from under his bushy brows. “Ah, Naomi,” he sighed, “why not let the boy alone?”

“I do not know what you mean,” she said angrily.

“He does not love Leah,” Ezra went on. “If he marries her it is only to please you, and what happiness can there be for either of them?”

Madame Ezra’s handsome face grew red. “David knows nothing about women,” she declared. “He is as silly as you were when I married you.”

“I was much more silly,” Ezra said gently. “I was clay in your hands, my dear.”

She was unwilling to let her anger go down. “Besides, Leah loves him,” she said.

“Then I pity her,” Ezra replied.

“Why?” she turned her head quickly to look at him again. “Why should you pity her?”

Ezra said, “I did not — love anyone else — exactly.”

Their eyes met and each looked away. There had been an hour years ago, in this very room, when she, a proud young woman, exceedingly beautiful and stern of faith, had accused him of stealing into a bondmaid’s room. Both would have said they had forgotten it, but neither had forgotten.

“If you mean Peony—” Madame Ezra said thickly.

Ezra shook his head. “No, I do not mean the bondmaid. I mean the daughter of Kung Chen.”

Madame Ezra rose as once long ago she had risen, and she looked down upon him. “No,” she cried, “never! I will not allow it. Why do you speak of her again?”

But Ezra was not now that young peace-loving amiable man. He had grown stout and strong, and after these years of living with her, and learning to love her at last, he could hold his own with her.

“Ah, Naomi,” he said gently and cruelly, “when will you ever learn that life does not wait for your allowance?”

With these words he turned away and left her. Peony, behind the cassia tree, pondered what she had heard. Should she return to David and tell him? But what had she heard except the old quarrel between these two elders? Better, then, would it be for her to wait until the quarrel was resolved, as Heaven might will.

She slipped from behind the tree and returned to her own room.

Madame Ezra had goaded Leah to despair. She had not meant to do so, but in the exasperation of her own fear she had harried and blamed and driven until Leah was terrified. This house, which had promised such shelter, was not secure, after all her hope! Her mother’s friend, the one nearest to her mother, was angry with her. What would happen to her if Madame Ezra sent her away? She saw the dreariness of her life stretching ahead in her father’s little house. When he died, she would be alone, with nothing except Madame Ezra’s angry charity. No, she would be worse than alone. Aaron would be there. In fear and despair she gave over trying to defend herself and she ended by utter silence. Whatever Madame Ezra said she did not answer. She stood, her head bowed while Madame Ezra talked on and on. Her hands clasped before her were so cold that they seemed frozen together. Her whole body felt bruised and heavy and her mind was numb.

When Madame Ezra shouted at her at last, “Leave me — and do not let me see your face again for a while!” Leah had turned and walked away without knowing where she was going.

She had no anger against Madame Ezra. She understood too well the agony of heart that had made the warm good woman fall into such fury. Madame Ezra was in despair, too. It was only despair that made her so cruel — despair and love. Madame Ezra loved David better than she loved anyone, better even than she loved God, and for this reason she wanted to keep her son, to keep him in the faith of her people. Here in this heathen land David would be lost to her if he were not kept in her faith. In her dreams he was the leader who might one day lead them all home again. All this Leah knew, and she saw into Madame Ezra’s heart clearly and nothing she saw made her angry because she understood all.

No, it was not Madame Ezra who had been wrong, but she herself, Leah, who had failed. She had not been able to make David love her and want her for his wife. How could she blame David, either, she asked herself humbly? She had done nothing in her life except tend a house for two men. She lifted her hands and looked at them. Wang Ma had taught her how to rub oil in them and she had tried to do it faithfully, but work and poverty had made them big and it was too late to change that. She had tried to learn the Torah, but she kept thinking and dreaming of David, as he sat there. Not once had he looked at her or showed a single sign of remembering the one day when she had moved his heart, the day the caravan came, when God helped her. But afterward she had done nothing — she had not even sought God’s help. Instead she had dreamed away the days, foolishly believing. Now, walking blindly along passageways and verandas and through courtyards, seeing nothing, she began to pray half aloud, “O Jehovah, our God, the One True God, hear me — and help me.”

And as she walked along blindly praying it seemed that she heard God’s voice bidding her to find David and go to him and open her heart to him. She lifted her head and the tears began to flow down her cheeks. If God helped her again, then everything would end as Madame Ezra wanted it — yes, and as she wanted it. She loved David, and how joyfully she would be his wife!

Her feet began to hurry over ways that she had not trod since she was a child. Long ago, when David was seven years old, he had been taken from his mother’s court and put into rooms near his father’s. The little girl Leah had gone with him one day to see them, and then Madame Ezra had heard of it and had forbade it. No woman except serving women should go to the men’s rooms.

Now Leah’s feet found the forgotten path, and since it was the hour when the servants were busy preparing the noon meal, no one saw her. Thus she came unannounced to David’s door.

David sat as Peony had left him, beside the table. Once he had risen to get a book, but he had not read it. He could not fix his mind upon the words even though he had thought he wanted to find them, because they had made a cluster of verses this morning when he saw Kueilan. They were not simple love verses. They were stern lines about the choice a man must make between love and duty.

And yet, he pondered, even before he opened the book, he was not making a choice between love and duty. His choice lay with duty alone. He could still put aside the pretty Chinese girl whom now he not so much loved as knew he could love, did he make the choice that would allow him. No, what he must decide in the microcosm of his one being was the same decision that lay before all his people. Would he keep himself separate, dedicated to a faith that made him solitary among whatever people he lived, or would he pour the stream of his life into the rich ocean of all human life about him? Dare he lose himself in that ocean? But would he be lost? Nothing was ever lost. What he was, his ancestors in him, his children to come from him, would deepen the ocean, but they could not be lost.

It was at this moment before decision, in the midst of his profound meditation, that he saw Leah upon his threshold. He rose to his feet, amazed that she had come here.

“Did you — are you looking for me?” he stammered.

The moment she looked at him her mind grew clear. There must be no more confusion between them. Soul must meet soul.

“Yes,” she said. “Your mother sent for me this morning and blamed me much concerning you.”

“That was wrong of her,” he said gently. But he was dazed. What did her coming at this moment mean? Did God Himself send her?

She came in and sat down where a little while before Peony had sat. David took his seat again. He saw that Leah had been crying, but something had dried her tears. Her great eyes were brilliant in their clarity and her cheeks were flushed. She was so beautiful that he wondered why he did not love her with all his heart and soul. His heart was silent. He could not love anyone until his soul had made its choice.

At this moment he saw the words of the tablet in the synagogue, engraved upon his own mind:

“Worship is to honor Heaven, and righteousness is to follow the ancestors. But the human mind has always existed before worship and righteousness.”

These bold dogged words of some ancient human being now strengthened David’s soul, and made him stubborn against God and man.

“You must not allow my mother to disturb you,” he said abruptly. “She used to trouble me very much. When I was a little boy it seemed to me that I could never please her. I was never quite good enough.” He smiled a little sadly. “She is so good — so full of zeal.”

“Your mother is right,” Leah said strongly. “It is I who was wrong — you have been wrong. You too, David!”

“Have I been wrong?” He tried to be playful with these words, for he dreaded what he felt in her now, opposed to his own determination to be free.

“If it were not for women like your mother and men like my father,” Leah said earnestly, “our people would long ago have been lost. We would have become as all other people are, without knowledge of the One True God. But they are the faithful, who have kept us a living and separate people.”

David’s eyes fell to her strong young hands clasped together and resting on the table. He was silent for a moment. Then he spoke very quietly. “Yet I wonder if it is not they who turn others against us — still.”

Leah’s lips parted. He saw that she did not understand his meaning. “It is hard for people to believe that we are better than they,” he went on. “And after all, how are we better, Leah? We are good merchants, we get rich, we are clever, and we make music and paint pictures and weave fine satins, and wherever we are we do well — and then we rouse men’s hatred and they kill us. Why? This is what I ask myself night and day, and I think I begin to see why.”

Leah could not endure these words. “Men hate us because they envy us,” she declared. “They do not want to know God. They are evil and they do not want to be good.”

David shook his head. “We say they are evil. We say we are good.”

Leah was shocked by these words. “David, how can you so willfully misunderstand the meaning of the Torah?” she cried. All her young energy was in the earnestness of her voice and eyes. “Has my father not told you? It is not that we are good. It is that God has chosen us to make known His will, through our Torah. If we are lost, then who will keep alive goodness? Shall the earth belong to the evil?”

To this David replied with some fire of his own. “I know no evil men — or women,” he maintained. He felt angry with Leah because she was stubborn also, and he said suddenly, “If I were to speak the name of an evil man I would say it is your brother, Aaron.”

With these words he struck her to the heart.

“You — you dare to say that!” she cried. “You should be ashamed, David!”

“Because he is your brother?” David demanded.

“No — because he is — is — one of us!” Leah cried.

David laughed harshly. “Now here is the proof of what I say! Justice is not in you, Leah, any more than it is in my mother. For me a man is good or evil, whether he is Jew or not.”

Leah faltered before his wrath. “What has Aaron done?”

David rose and went to the open door and stood, his back to her. “I cannot tell you what he did,” he said haughtily. “It would not be fit for your ears.” He stared out into the bamboo-shaded court.

“There is nothing my brother does that I cannot know,” Leah retorted.

“Hear it, then,” David said. “He behaved foully to a woman.”

Leah was silent a moment. Wisdom bade her say no more, but she was filled with anger against David. He had escaped her again and she was angry and frightened beyond any wisdom.

“What woman?” she demanded.

“I will not tell you,” David answered. His back was still turned to her and he continued to look into the court.

Now at this moment Small Dog chose to appear at the moon gate opposite where he stood. She paused on the threshold and peered at him with her sad round eyes, and her red tongue hung out of the corner of her mouth. It was her habit to follow Peony, but being lazy and slow, she was always late. She followed by scent and not by sight.

But Leah knew that Small Dog always came after Peony, and quick as the flame to tinder, she understood. “I know what woman!” she said. “It was Peony!”

David cursed Small Dog in his heart, but what was there to say? He strode back into the room and he sat down and clapped the palms of his hands on the table. “It was Peony!” he shouted. “A bondmaid in the house where he was guest!”

Their eyes met in common fury, and neither yielded.

“If it had been any other woman, you would not have cared!” Leah cried wildly. She had only one longing now, and it was to wound David with all her strength, and she searched for the words that would hurt him most. “I know why you do not want me!” she cried. “Peony has corrupted you and spoiled you and made you weak to the bone. She has stolen your very soul.” She could not go on. She tried not to weep but she began to sob aloud and she hated herself for breaking.

David’s anger left him suddenly. Looking into the beautiful distressed face, he was filled with tenderness and pity. “It is not Peony whom I love,” he said. “Someone else — perhaps — someone you have never even seen.” So his heart made its own choice, after all, and his soul was silent.

Leah stopped crying. She stared at him, her eyes blank, her lips quivering, while the meaning of these words seeped into her mind. She felt them thunder in her heart and drain through her blood like poison. Then her mind grew dark. She leaped to her feet and tore down the sword that hung upon the wall within the reach of her right hand. She seized it and swung it across the table. The sharp curved blade struck David across the head. He put up his hand, felt the gush of blood, his eyes glazed, and he fell. Leah stared down at him, the sword still gripped in her hand.

At this moment Small Dog, who had watched all this, pattered forward and smelled at her master. She touched the tip of her tongue to his blood, and then, lifting her head, she began to howl.

When she heard the sound of the dog’s wail the sword dropped from Leah’s hand. All her reason came flooding back to her. She fell to her knees and took the sleeve of her robe and put it to David’s head. “Oh, God,” she whispered. “How could I?” Her whole being melted. “Oh, what shall I do?” she moaned.

And all the while Small Dog continued to wail.

Now Peony was used to Small Dog’s voice, and whenever she heard it if the dog did not come she went to find her. She heard the high keening of the dog through the open doors of the courts and she rose quickly and followed the sound, and so she came to David’s court. Through the open door she saw Leah kneeling and weeping and the sword was on the floor.

“Heaven — how did he wound himself?” Peony screamed, running into the room.

Then Leah stood up, and all her blood rushed up into her face. “I did it,” she said. Her voice was strangled in her throat.

“You!” Peony whispered. She gave Leah one dreadful look. “Help me get him to his bed! Then go and tell his mother!”

She ordered Leah as though Leah were the maid and she the mistress, and Leah, trembling, obeyed her. Together the two girls lifted David and carried him into the other room and laid him upon his bed, and his head fell back and blood streamed on the pillow.

“Oh, he is dead!” Leah shrieked.

“No, he is not,” Peony said hardily. “Leave him to me. Go and tell his mother.”

“I cannot, I cannot,” Leah wailed.

Peony turned on her. “Shall I let him die while I go?” she demanded.

To this what answer could there be? Sobbing aloud, Leah ran out of the room, and then she paused, weeping and dazed. There was the sword. It lay on the floor beside Small Dog, who sat as though guarding it for a witness. Leah stood beside that sword. Then she stooped and picked it up and Small Dog growled. But Leah paid no heed to the dog. She lifted the sword and drew it across her own throat and the sharp quick blade did its work. She sank down, the sword clattered on the tile floor, and the little dog began to bark furiously.

In the other room Peony heard Leah’s footsteps stop. Under her hand she felt David’s heart beating and she stood, her hand on his heart, listening. Then she heard the silence and then she waited. Then she heard the dog growl. She waited again. The next moment she heard the clatter, and she ran on noiseless feet to the curtained door. There Leah lay, her neck half severed and her hair already soaked with blood. The sword was beside her, and the little dog barked on.

“Hush,” Peony said, “hush, Small Dog.”

She stepped into the room and then ran as though ghosts pursued her. Now Peony had bade Leah fetch Madame Ezra, but at this frightful moment she herself had not courage enough to call her. She ran instead for Wang Ma, and she kept silent, not wanting any other to know first what had befallen.

Before she found Wang Ma she found Old Wang. He had taken advantage of the noonday heat, when all slept, to pull a watermelon out of the north well. This melon he had split and now he was enjoying its golden coolness in a quiet and little-used corridor to the kitchen court. Peony had chosen this corridor and so she came upon him. At first he was frightened lest she see the stolen melon; then he perceived that she did not even see what he was doing.

“Where is Wang Ma?” she asked.

“Sleeping under the bamboos yonder.” He pointed with his chin.

Peony hastened on, and soon she saw Wang Ma sitting on a stool and sound asleep, her face on her knees.

“Wang Ma!” she cried in a low and urgent voice.

Wang Ma woke instantly from the light slumber of the watchful servant. She stared at Peony, stupid with sleep, and Peony shook her shoulder.

“Wang Ma — here’s death! The Jewess and our young master quarreled. She flung the sword at him, at his head.”

“Oh, Heaven,” Wang Ma muttered. She jumped up. “Where?” she cried.

“In his courts. Wait! Wang Ma, she turned the sword on herself.”

“Both — dead?” Wang Ma’s voice was a whisper of terror.

“No — only she.”

“Do the old ones know?”

“Shall I tell them, or will you?”

The two women looked at each other. Both were thinking fast.

“I will go and prepare for what the old ones must see,” Wang Ma decided. “Do you go to tell them.”

So they parted, and Peony went to Madame Ezra. It was better to tell her first, she thought, but when she came to the door, there was Ezra too, and so there was nothing but to tell them both.

They cried out at the sight of her face. “What is wrong with you?” Madame Ezra exclaimed.

“Be silent, Naomi,” Ezra commanded her. He rose but Peony beckoned with both her hands. She could not tell them, after all. They must see for themselves. “Come — come — the two of you! Oh — oh!”

She began to weep and to run back again from where she came, and they looked at one another and without another word they hastened after her.

With what fearful hearts did these two parents follow after Peony when they saw her footsteps turn toward David’s court! They said not one word but hastened on and Madame Ezra was ahead.

At the moon gate Peony stopped. “I must tell you …” she began.

But Madame Ezra pushed her aside and went on.

Ezra hesitated. “Is David—?” he asked, and his lips were dry.

“No,” Peony said. “Not he — but oh, Master, be ready — Leah has taken her own life — with that sword!”

Now Ezra cried out and he pushed past her, too, and he followed Madame Ezra and then Peony followed. But the room where Leah had lain was empty. Wang Ma had caught Old Wang by the collar as she passed him and together they had hastened on. Together they had lifted Leah from the floor and they had carried her into the room in the next court where the Rabbi had taught David the Torah, and there upon a couch they laid her and Wang Ma tore a curtain from a door and covered her with it. While she did this Old Wang went back and took off his jacket and sopped up the blood upon the tiles and dipped water from the pool and wiped the place clean.

So now when Madame Ezra looked in she saw only emptiness, and then she hastened into David’s room and there he lay upon his bed. Peony had bound her own white silk girdle about his head to stanch the wound, and he lay as though he slept, but breathing hard and fast. Madame Ezra was wild with fear. She screamed his name and when he did not answer she abused Peony.

“Wait, Naomi,” Ezra commanded her. “We must send for the physician.”

“But why did you not tell me he had wounded himself?” Madame Ezra cried at Peony, and she took the girl by the shoulders and shook her and Ezra had to come between them. Peony did not say a word for she did not blame her mistress. She knew that sorrow distracted Madame Ezra and that it would ease her to let her anger out. Old Wang came in at this moment and Wang Ma too, and Ezra commanded Old Wang to go at once for the physician and Wang Ma to go and brew herbs.

So Peony was left alone to tell what had happened. This she did in a few simple words. Ezra and Madame Ezra listened, their hearts beating, their eyes wide, and Madame Ezra sat down beside David and began chafing his hands, and she said nothing.

“But why did they quarrel?” Ezra asked in sad wonder.

“I do not know,” Peony said. “I thought only of him when I saw him lying there, and while I bound his head she—”

Madame Ezra burst into sudden loud weeping. “Oh, that wicked, wicked girl — and I treated her as though she were my own daughter! What if she has killed my son!”

“Leah was not wicked,” Ezra said sorrowfully. “Something drove her mad — but now we will never know what it was.”

Madame Ezra stopped weeping suddenly. “I shall never forgive her,” she said.

“Even if David lives?” Ezra asked.

“She tried to kill him,” she replied.

At this moment David stirred and opened his eyes, and looked from one face to the other.

“Leah?” he asked faintly.

“Hush!” Madame Ezra said.

“But she — never meant …” His voice trailed away.

“Hush!” Madame Ezra said fiercely.

“Do not speak, my son,” Ezra said. He came near and took David’s hand, and thus the parents waited. But David closed his eyes again and spoke no more. Now Wang Ma brought the bowl of herb tea and a spoon and Peony fed the tea to David slowly until at last the doctor came. He was a small, stooped, silent man and he wore great horn-rimmed spectacles and he smelled of ginger and dried bones.

They rose and stood when he came in and stood waiting and watchful while he examined the wound and felt the pulse and meditated a while.

“Will my son live?” Ezra asked at last.

“He will live,” the physician said, “but for a long time his life will not be secure. The wound is not only of the flesh. His spirit has received a blow.”

“What shall we do?” Madame Ezra implored.

“Give him his way in everything,” the physician answered.