Peony: A Novel of China

by Pearl S. Buck

  Each had gone to his room, and finding this so, Peony motioned Wang Ma to Ezra’s room, and she herself went to David. She did not know how she would find him, whether weeping or not, but she was not prepared for his calmness when, having coughed at his door, she heard him bid her enter. He stood there taking off the sackcloth outer garment that he had worn for the funeral, and underneath he had his usual silk robes. They were of a dark blue today, to signify the solemnity of what had taken place. When he turned his head she saw his face grave but not weeping.

  “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 s
lowly and stroked his beard. “Go on,” he said.

  Peony inclined her own head modestly. The web was well begun but it was not finished. “Sir, there is more than this. I wish to offend no one—but it may be you remember the young lady to whom our young lord was once betrothed—or very nearly.”

  “The one who—” Kung Chen drew his long forefinger across his throat.

  “That one,” Peony agreed.

  “Did—he—ah—love her?” Kung Chen next inquired. There was some jealousy in him for his daughter, but he did not speak it out.

  Peony perceived the jealousy well enough. “I will not say he loved her,” she said hesitatingly. “I would even say he did not, for it was at that very time that he loved our young mistress—your daughter, sir. But in some strange way these two young ladies struggled in his heart against one another. Thus the foreign one kept him back from loving entirely our lady, now the mother of his sons, and our lady made him unable to love the foreign one whom his mother wished for her daughter-in-law. The two spoiled one another for him.”

  Kung Chen pondered this a while. “Was the other more beautiful than my daughter?” he now asked.

  Peony considered. “No,” she said, then she added, “but she had some hidden power over him. It was the same power his mother had, and he loved and hated it together. While his mother lived, he rebelled against it and he maintained himself. But now that she is dead, he remembers the other one, too, and he feels that somewhere he has a duty undone, and he is restless.”

  “What has the journey to do with all this?” Kung Chen next inquired.

  “They both wanted to leave our land and go to that one where their ancestors were,” Peony replied.

  Kung Chen mused a while longer. He remembered all that he had learned of the Jews and of the lodestone of faith that drew them back to the arid strip of earth that had once been theirs. Certainly his Little Three must not suffer and she must not be left a widow with many children, and in the height of her young womanhood. He moved to protect his own.

  “The young man is restless,” he said, stroking his beard. “It is natural enough. He has never traveled. Men often grow restless after the first years of marriage. They know all they have, and they think of new sights. Very well, he shall travel, and my daughter and the children and you must all go with him. I will lend my own mule carts and my muleteers to meet you when you leave the river, and my cooks will go with you, and they will all take the journey to the northern capital. I shall ask the governor of our province, moreover, to send some of his own guards with you, as warning to robbers and river pirates. Spring is just beyond tomorrow and the journey will be pleasant. I shall ask his father to decide that the journey is necessary for our business, and indeed it may well be.”

  Kung Chen was very well pleased with himself, and he wagged his big head to and fro. His mind ran ahead of his plans. “Yes, and I will see that I have a fine gift that must be presented for me to the two new empresses, and I will send word to my friends to give feasts for my son-in-law, and I will give orders at the Pear Garden Theater to show plays for him and for his friends, whom he must feast in return. Who does not enjoy the northern capital? It is the most beautiful city in the world.” Kung Chen’s imagination grew warm. He rubbed his hands together over the coals. “All is as it should be,” he said. “The Imperial Court is home from exile now—it has returned from Jehol to Peking—and the capital is filled with joy. Truce has been declared with the white men over the opium from India, and the rebel Christians are defeated in the eastern provinces. It is time again for pleasure and for trade.”

  He clapped his hands on his knees and beamed so brightly that Peony was delighted indeed. She rose, her own face bright too. “It is a plan from Heaven,” she declared. “I will wait then, sir, until commands come down.” Then bowing she went home again.

  Behind her Kung Chen sat alone, stroking his beard and frowning into the fire. His Little Three—was she happy? He had taken it for granted that she was, since each year she had given birth to a son. Once or twice he had asked her mother what she thought, but Madame Kung seldom thought at all about a daughter who had left the house to belong to another family.

  His mind went gratefully to Peony. Where she was, doubtless all would be well.

  Thus it came about that on a fine day in later spring David, persuaded by Peony, set out for the north. He, his wife, and their children and Peony went aboard a great river junk and sailed for the northern capital. With them were undermaids and menservants and two cooks whom Kung Chen chose because they came from the north and begged to have the chance to see their old home again. On a smaller boat the guards went ahead of them.

  Ezra saw them go with a chill heart, and he dreaded his loneliness until they came back. Yet he dared not leave his business, for Kao Lien was about to lead his camels westward again, and the loads must be chosen from the best Chinese goods. Moreover, since peace had come with the white men from India, Ezra had in mind to send down two trustworthy men with Chinese goods to be sold there. He was further persuaded by Kung Chen, who said that his own loss would be heavy if Ezra did not send out these loads early enough to bring back western goods by the next early winter at latest. So Ezra made the best of his lot, and Wang Ma and Old Wang stayed at home, and Kao Lien moved into Ezra’s house for the last weeks before he set out, and David made promises to come home soon, and Kung Chen promised that he would dine with Ezra every day, and so the parting was made.

  On the junk all was confusion at first. The children cried with the strangeness and they were frightened when with many shouts and curses the boatmen eased the huge junk from the shore and edged their way into the middle of the river, pushing with long bamboo poles and rowing until in midstream the wind caught their sails. Each nurse comforted the child that was her responsibility, and the baby clung to the breast of the wetnurse, and so quiet came. Peony tended her young mistress and saw that she was seated on a couch and that she had tea and sweetmeats, and she unpacked cushions and fans and bedding and charcoal braziers and everything that could be used for greater comfort. This done, she inquired of the cooks what was to be prepared for the day’s meals, since they had come aboard at early morning, and only when she was satisfied with their plans did she let her heart rest, and she looked around to see where they were to live.

  The junk was a mighty one, for the river, and the bow and the stern rose high out of the water. Upon the bow were painted two great eyes, and upon the stern was painted the tail of a fish. The boatmen lived in two small cabins at the stern, and with them were their wives and children. But gates shut them off from the others and they kept themselves apart. Each child had a rope tied about his middle, so that if he fell into the water, the mother could haul him up again, and Peony exclaimed that such ropes should be put about her charges, too. She took two coils of soft hempen rope that the boatman gave her, but when she tied these ropes about the waists of David’s sons, they cried with rage and would not be tied, and Peony had no choice except to bid the maids to hold them by their sashes, and never let them be free for one moment. Thus two maids were continually busy all day and Peony thanked Heaven that the youngest child could not walk.

  The kitchens came next after the boatmen’s cabins, and the cooks slept in them at night. They were small but there was everything needful for preparing fine food, and soon the cooks were at their duty. In front of the kitchens were the bedrooms for the family and the great central saloon, where they sat by day. Here Peony must sleep by night, for the children and their nurses must have one bedroom, and David and his wife the other, and Peony had no place for her own. This was hardship indeed, but she told herself that when she needed solitude very much she could sit outside the windows of the saloon, where the deck was so narrow that the children could not come and where her mistress would not dare to walk. This place then became her own. In front of the saloon there was a wide deck, and the floors were of fine varnished wood, which neither sun nor rain could spoil. This varnish c
ame from Ningpo, whose people are famous for their junks and seagoing ships.

  Thus began the journey that was to last for days. For herself Peony looked forward to every day with pleasure. She had work enough to superintend the life of all, and yet she had hours in which to sit dreaming in her own little place, disturbed only by a boatman when he passed from stern to bow and back again, or when the wind failed and the oars must be used until the tow ropes were out. But she feared very much lest David grow restless. He was used to space and many courts, and would he be patient closed into this vessel with crying children and his wife sometimes impatient? At first she was afraid; then she found she need not fear.

  For David found himself absorbed in the sights that passed before their eyes. Sometimes their way was slow enough so that he could walk on the shore, and many miles he walked over new country and through provinces that he had never seen before. Everywhere he was treated with courtesy, and when the towmen stopped to rest and eat and drink tea, he took his meal ashore, too, and the townspeople spoke to him courteously, inquiring only what country he came from. When he spoke the name of his own city they wondered.

  “We did not know that foreigners lived there,” they told him.

  “I am not a foreigner,” he replied. “I was born in that city and my father before me.”

  “But what country did your ancestors come from?” they then inquired.

  “From over the mountains,” he replied, and they nodded, their curiosity satisfied.

  He did not talk often with Peony, for there was little chance for this, and they both, without words, knew that Kueilan would not be pleased if she saw her husband talking with a bondmaid beyond what was necessary. Yet sometimes when Peony had put her mistress to bed, and she went to the foredeck to tell David that all was ready for the night, David lingered a few minutes, especially if the moon shone.