Pearl Buck - Peony

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.