Pearl Buck - Peony

“Come in, Peony,” he said quietly. “I was about to send for you.”

He sat down himself and looked at her most kindly. “Do not wait for me to bid you seat yourself,” he said. “You know how much you have become in this house.”

She sat down and waited.

“Did I know how I could manage without you, I would not let my conscience trouble me,” he went on. “I ought to find a husband for you, Peony. We are all selfish toward you, and I am the most selfish. But the truth is that without you we would be like a boat without a rudder. Now that my mother is gone—” He paused and pressed his lips together.

“I have no wish to wed, Young Master,” Peony said.

“You always say that,” David replied, “but it does not absolve me from my duty.”

Peony put the matter aside. “What did you wish to tell me?” she asked.

David got up suddenly and walked to the door and stood looking out. The winter of the year was over and spring nearly come. The air was mild on that afternoon, and the door was open to the court. “I want to make a journey,” he said.

“A journey?” Peony repeated. “Where?”

“You know my mother and I planned to take the journey westward to the land of our ancestors. I have a wish to make that journey now, alone.” He paused and then he said abruptly, “There is something restless in me.”

“There is something restless in you,” Peony repeated. She felt stupid with surprise and yet she knew she needed all her wits about her.

“I feel some hidden guilt in me,” David went on. “I have had the guilt ever since Leah died. Now my mother is dead. This journey would somehow be for them.”

“Would you leave your father?” Peony asked. She felt breathless, but she made herself calm.

“He does not need me,” David said. “He has his friends — and his grandsons. I think sometimes he is nearer to them than to me. And you would be here, Peony — and Wang Ma.”

“But your children — and their mother!” Peony urged. “How can I take this responsibility?”

“You do take it, Peony, whether I am here or not,” he told her.

Now she could not hold back her fears. “What if you died upon the way?” she cried. “What if you were — were killed?” She remembered the sword with the thin blade that had done such evil to his people in other countries, and had done evil here in this house, too, but she could not speak of it. Old Wang had taken that sword and had carried it to the river and had thrown it as far as his strength could reach, into the yellow whirlpools.

“Many have been killed,” David said quietly. “There is no reason why I should not face the same danger.”

Now what could Peony say? She longed to cry out to him to stay for her own sake, for he was all her life, and if he did not come back, she too could no longer live. But she was afraid to seize this comfort. His mind was very far away at this moment. She felt a strange jealousy that she had not known since Leah died. She had forgotten Leah for months upon months, even years, but now Leah came back in all her beauty. Did he remember that beauty? She weighed the common sense of speaking Leah’s name to him and decided that she would not. If he thought of Leah, to talk of her would be to bring her into this room where they were alone. Let Leah lie dead! Yet what hold was this that clung beyond the grave? What was the conscience in him? She could not answer her own question and she rose gracefully, quiet above her inner turmoil. “Let all be as you will, Young Master,” she said.

To her surprise David turned on her with anger. “Do not call me that, Peony!” he said with much impatience. “At least when we are alone call me by my name. Have we not been brother and sister all our lives?”

What words could wound her more than these? But she refused to allow her hurt to show and she answered smoothly, “I will try to remember. Do not take the journey unless you must. Yet if you must I will try to be all I should be while you are gone.”

With this she went away, having contrived it so that she did not speak his name. Someday perhaps she would speak it, but not while he remembered Leah.

She went to her own room and sat a long while, pondering what she would do. She heard her name called and she went into her bedroom and hid herself behind the bed curtains, and crouching there she thought a while longer and until her mind was clear. She would go to Kung Chen, and he would help her. Certainly he would not allow his daughter’s husband to wander away into the westward country to come back not sooner than a year and perhaps even never to come back. To think of this was to do it, and once again she slipped out of the Gate of Peaceful Escape, which she had not needed to use in these years since David’s marriage day.

Kung Chen was at home, for he had been wearied by the long funeral, and he sat inside his own rooms, sipping hot wine and gazing into a small brazier of coals that he had ordered prepared for his comfort rather than for warmth. She was ushered immediately into his presence, since all knew she served his daughter.

“Honored Sir,” Peony said in a small sweet voice.

He looked up kindly at her slender, gray-robed figure and remembered that he had seen her standing beside his daughter and holding the wailing child. “Do not stand in my presence,” he now commanded her. “We are old acquaintances. Do you remember the morning by the fish pool?” He did not tell her what he thought, that she had grown very beautiful since that morning. Then she had been a rosy girl but now she was a woman, graceful and self-possessed. If the old gay glance of her eyes was gone, a lovely quietness had taken its place. No one would imagine that she was a bondmaid. She had grown far beyond that place.

“What have you to tell me?” he asked.

Peony sat down delicately and folded her hands. She did not tell him what she thought, that he had aged very much since the morning by the fish pool. She had seen him only at a distance since that day. Now she saw him much thinner than he had been. His full face was slack and he had grown a scanty beard that was turning white. But his height remained and his shoulders were still broad. She knew that all his children were married, although for Lili, the child of his concubine, he had been able to find only the son of an ironmonger. Wealthy families did not wish to marry their sons to the daughter of a concubine who had run away with a head servant. This had been grief to Kung Chen, for he loved his little Lili above all the other children.

“Sir, it is for the sake of my young mistress that I come,” Peony said. “After we returned from the funeral today, I went to serve hot food to my young master, which is my duty, and I found him distraught, and when I inquired he told me that it was in his heart now to make the journey alone to the land of his ancestors, which he once planned to make with his mother. I said nothing, but I came to tell you. Sir, the journey would take a full year, but this is not the worst of it. The Muslims are very fierce along the way, and Kao Lien told my old mistress so even before she died. My young master will stand in danger of his life if he goes. I think of our lady, your daughter, and the children.”

Kung Chen heard this in great astonishment. “How is it that the son would make a pilgrimage when his father does not?” he inquired. “Does this not smack of filial impiety? Would his father not feel reproached before Heaven?”

Peony took her courage in her hands. She had a very delicate web to weave. “Sir, our young lord is the son of our old mistress. Our old lord is the son of one of our own people. The soul of the mother is in the son.”

Kung Chen began to understand. He nodded his head slowly and stroked his beard. “Go on,” he said.