Peony: A Novel of China (41 page)

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.