Pearl Buck - Peony

A year ago he had discovered the girl with his own head servant, and when anger was spent and he came to full measure of sorrow, he comprehended that sorrow, too, is part of love. At first he had thought of punishment for the two who had betrayed him, but then he understood that punishment cannot win back a woman’s love or a man’s loyalty, and that it could therefore be only self-indulgence for himself. This he would not allow, and so he had called the two before him, and with a smiling face and kindly words he had told them to go away and set up their own family, and he gave them money and dismissed them, keeping only his daughter. When the pretty woman looked back longingly, thinking of what she must do without, now that she had chosen the servant instead of the master, Kung Chen’s face was inexorable in its calm, and she knew that what she had lost she had lost indeed, and so she went away.

Now, although Kung Chen had ceased to think of love, the little romance of the fish brought it back to him for a moment, a forgotten dream, and he sighed. Love passed swiftly and no man could put off its end, and marriage had nothing to do with love. If his daughter fancied the young foreigner, and if the family welcomed her, as assuredly any family would welcome a daughter of his, then it remained for him a matter of business. If he denied his daughter to Ezra’s son, it would be painful to do business with Ezra thereafter. The contract pending between them could never be signed. Ezra would take it to another merchant, and of good merchants there was a plenty in the city, though none so rich as he. It would be very irksome to see one of them benefit from Ezra’s foreign goods. Yes, marriage could be a good connection for him to make with the House of Ezra. It would make their partnership something more than business. All business should have its human connections. The more human every relationship could be, the more sound it was, the more lasting. Kung Chen did not altogether trust Ezra as an honest man any more than he trusted himself. Where large sums of money were concerned, no man could be sure of any man. But if Ezra and he poured their separate bloods into one, then they were one, and dishonesty became absurd.

“Call it only shrewdness,” he murmured to the fish.

Well, his Little Three would be happier in the foreign house if Peony were there, a young Chinese girl, to be her playmate. He must talk with Little Three, if the marriage was to be arranged. But first he should talk with her mother.

Upon this Kung Chen rose reluctantly and sauntered toward his wife’s court, and he clapped his hands at her door. A maidservant came running, and seeing him invited him to enter.

“Is my son’s mother at leisure?” he inquired.

“My mistress is sitting in the sunshine, doing nothing,” the maid told him.

So Kung Chen went in and found his fat, middle-aged wife sitting in a large wicker chair, a tortoise-shell cat before her tossing a mouse it had caught. She looked up when he came, her face covered with smiles.

“Look at this clever cat!” she exclaimed. “It has caught two mice today.”

“I thought you were a Buddhist,” he said teasingly.

“I kill no mice,” his lady retorted.

“You are not a cat,” he said.

“No,” she agreed.

“Nor the cat a Buddhist,” he went on.

To this pleasantry she made no reply, only continuing to watch the cat. But Kung Chen did not mind. Long ago he had comprehended that hers was a pleasant little mind, not deeper than a cup, and he must not pour it too full. He had measured it exactly and they never quarreled. Now he sat down so that he could not see the cat, who was daintily crushing the mouse’s bones.

“I have come to ask your advice about our Little Three,” he began.

His wife made a gesture of impatience with her plump gold-ringed hands. “That naughty girl!” she exclaimed. “She will not learn her embroidery and I am sure Chu Ma does it for her.”

“Little Three takes after me — I never liked to embroider,” Kung Chen said. His face was grave but his eyes twinkled.

His wife looked up at him in simple surprise. “You were never taught to embroider!” she exclaimed.

“No,” he agreed. “Had I been, I should have hated it. She is my daughter — forgive me!”

Madame Kung smiled, perceiving that he was joking again, and fell silent, enjoying the cat. Her plump hands lay on the lap of her pearl-gray satin robe like half-open flowers of yellow lotus. She had been so pretty when she was young that it had taken Kung Chen some years to discover that she was stupid.

“Well?” she asked after a long silence.

“I am about to have another proposal for our Little Three,” Kung Chen said.

“Who wants her now?” Madame Kung asked. There had been many proposals for each of their daughters. Any rich family with a son thought first of a daughter of Kung.

“The foreigner Ezra is considering her for his son, David,” Kung Chen said.

Madame Kung looked indignant. “Shall we consider him?” she asked.

Kung Chen replied in a mild voice, “I think so. They are very rich and Ezra and I have planned a new contract. There is only the one son, and Little Three will not have to contend with other sons’ wives.”

“But a foreigner!” she objected.

“Have you ever seen them?” Kung Chen asked.

Madame Kung shook her head. “I have heard about them,” she said. “They have high noses and big eyes. I do not want a grandson with a big nose and big eyes.”

“Little Three’s nose is almost too small,” Kung Chen said tolerantly. “Moreover, you know our Chinese blood always smooths away extremes. By the next generation the children will look Chinese.”

“I hear the foreigners are very fierce,” Madame Kung objected.

“Fierce?” Kung Chen repeated.

“They have religious fever,” Madame Kung said. “They will not eat this and that, and they pray every day and they have no god that can be seen but they fear him very much and they say our gods are false. All this is uncomfortable. Our Little Three might even have to worship a strange god.”

“Little Three has never done anything she did not want to do,” Kung Chen said, smilingly.

“With many young men wanting her, why should we choose a foreign husband for her?” Madame Kung asked.

The cat had now consumed the mouse, except the head, and she took this and put it neatly behind the door. Madame Kung was so diverted that she laughed and forgot what they were talking about.

“Aside from business,” Kung Chen said with patience, “I do not believe in separating people into different kinds. All human beings have noses, eyes, arms, legs, hearts, stomachs, and so far as I have been able to learn, we all reproduce in the same fashion.”

Madame Kung was interested when he mentioned reproduction. “I have heard that foreigners open their stomachs and take their children out of a hole they have there,” she said.

“It is not true,” Kung Chen replied.

“How do you know?” she asked.

“My friend Ezra and I attend the same bath house and he is made as I am, except that he has much hair on his body.”

Madame Kung showed still more lively interest. “I have heard that this hairiness is because foreigners are nearer the monkeys than we are.” Then she looked concerned. “Suppose our Little Three does not like a hairy man?”

“Our Little Three will never see any man except the man she marries,” Kung Chen said. “Therefore she will not know she does not like his hairiness.”

They had now come to the crux of the matter and Kung Chen put the question to her. “Then if I receive the proposal?”

“If?” Madame Kung interrupted.

“When I receive the proposal,” he corrected himself, “I shall accept it?”