Pearl Buck - Peony

To this Peony only smiled and said, “It gives your lord pleasure, does it not, my lady?”

One day when Peony had so answered Kueilan threw her a shrewd look and she said, “It is only to please him, then? You do not care for me.”

Peony felt her heart stop. Then she said smoothly, “I take it that what gives him pleasure gives you the most pleasure, too, but if I am wrong, Lady, please instruct me.”

This put Kueilan in a difficulty, for how could she say she did not wish to give her husband pleasure? She was silent, but after that Peony took care never to mention David to her again. She learned more wisdom, and her soul grew deep as life itself.

When David came back at midmorning, looking weary but triumphant, the whole house was waiting to receive him, his wife dressed and pretty, the children clean and eager, and the servants respectful and yet curious.

Peony met him at the gate. “Is it too much to ask that you tell us what has happened? We wait to know, and with one telling it will be told to all.”

“First let me eat and drink, for I am faint,” David replied. “We were not allowed to sit down and I had to bow myself on my knees until they are sore.”

She followed him into the house and to his own rooms and took the heavy hat from his head, and the stiff brocaded robe he next laid aside, and the high velvet boots. Then she fetched his easy robe of summer silk and his low satin shoes and he ate and drank food that she ordered brought to him and he slept an hour and then he was ready.

In the great hall of the house Peony assembled all, and David sat down in the highest seat and looked about at his family and servants. The day was fine and the summer sunshine fell into the court and shone through the wide-open doors and he thought to himself that what he had was well enough to make a man proud. His wife sat across the table from him, and she wore a soft green satin robe, and jade was in her ears and in the knot of her hair and gold and jade were upon her hands and wrists. She was as pretty as the girl he had first seen in Kung Chen’s hall. Near her stood his two handsome sons, dressed like little men in long silk robes, their hair braided in queues and corded with red silk. The third son was now beginning to walk, and his nurse held him by a broad silk girdle and followed him as he staggered everywhere. Peony sat near the door, and he knew her quiet beautiful face. The servants stood together clean and waiting. He took up his tea bowl, sipped and set it down, and then began:

“You must understand that it is no easy matter to appear before the empresses. I waited for more than two hours in an anteroom with others who had been granted audience today, and we were given no seats or tea. A eunuch led us there and bade us wait, and it was the Chief Steward himself who was to call us. But when he came he had first to teach us what to expect and how to behave. The Eastern Empress, he told us, was ill today and only the Western Empress would receive us. We were not to look at the Imperial Screen behind which we sat—”

At this point David’s elder son cried out, “Dieh-dieh, did you not see her?”

David shook his head. “No one is allowed to see her, my first son. She is empress but she is also a woman — a beautiful one, and a widow. Her behavior is correct.

“Well, we all went in, and I was given the third place—”

“Why the third place, Dieh-dieh?” his son asked again.

At this David looked impatient and Peony rose softly and led the little boy to her side and held him in her arm. Then David went on: “That I am third is because I have no official rank and there were two before me who had. I was the first of those without rank, and this is because Kung Chen has special favor in our province and has been mentioned at the court by our provincial governor.”

So David went on, and he told how he came in and how he bowed his head to the floor and how he must stay in that position until his name was called, and how then he stood with bowed head and presented his gifts, which had been taken from him at the door when he entered. He explained that the gifts were from Europe, not as good as anything already here, but still he hoped that Her Majesty would find a moment’s idle pleasure in their curiosity. Then he spoke of the House of Ezra and its contracts with the House of Kung, and he thanked the Empress because although his ancestors came from foreign lands, yet they had lived here in peace.

At this point David stopped and looked at them with some pride. “When I said this, the Western Empress spoke to me.”

“What did she say?” Kueilan asked.

“She asked me if you were foreign too, but I said no. Then she asked me if I had children and I said yes, three sons. Now hear me — she commanded me to bring my sons and let her see them, because she has never seen children of foreign blood!”

What consternation, pride, and excitement now fell on David’s family!

“Did she set a day?” his wife exclaimed.

“Tomorrow, at four in the afternoon, we are all to go. I am to wait in the anteroom, but you and the children and their nurses must go to the garden where the ladies of the court will be gathering flowers. The Chief Steward will take you there and you are to stay only as long as he says and then come back.”

“Peony must come with me,” Kueilan said immediately.

“Oh, no!” Peony exclaimed.

“Yes, you must go,” David said with authority. “It is only you who can stop a child from crying.”

So it was decided, and for once Kueilan was too distraught to play her mah-jongg well and that night she was peevish when Peony came to put her to bed because she had lost so much money.

“Your lord is rich and generous,” Peony reminded her. “He will not reproach you, Lady.”

But Kueilan did not want to be comforted and she continued peevish until Peony left her in bed and went to tell David that she was ready to go to sleep.

She found him very meditative in his garden, sitting under a twisted pine tree in a bamboo chair. He heard her message and inclined his head but he did not rise for a moment. Peony waited, perceiving that he had been thinking and might want to tell her what he thought. When he did not speak she asked a question to excuse her lingering.

“How did the voice of the Western Empress sound in your ears?”

“Strong and fresh, but without sweetness,” he answered.

Then he said what was in his mind. “Peony, I never felt so clearly before the imperial clemency that has been shown to my people. She knew me foreign, she heard me give her thanks — and all she wished was to see my children.”

“Woman’s curiosity in an empress,” Peony said smiling.

“But no dislike!” he exclaimed.

“Why should there be dislike when your people have never made a war here or taken what was not yours of land or goods?” Peony asked warmly. “You have been good people — and you and your father are good men.”

David looked at her strangely. “Our goodness has not saved us elsewhere in the world,” he said.

“Those other foreign peoples are unreasonable,” Peony retorted. “We have been taught reason with our mothers’ milk.”

Upon this she went away, and the more she pondered what David had said, the more she was not certain whether it had been well to have him grateful to the Empress or whether it were a good sign that she had made him feel foreign again. Peony sighed and for the first time wished that a day had been set for their return to their own city.

There was no time for thinking or wishing on the morrow, be sure of that. All day Kueilan spent in bathing and powdering and dressing, and the hairline of her forehead must be straightened and every little hair pulled out that did not lie flat, and only Peony could do this without hurting her. The long fingernail on the third finger of her right hand broke off and this made her shed tears of anger.