Pearl Buck - Peony

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—”