Peony: A Novel of China by Pearl S. Buck Page A

herself was neither lofty nor very good. How could she be good, even if she wished to be, when she must win all she had by wile and trickery?
    I have nothing and nobody except myself, the small Chinese girl thought sadly.
    She shut down the mirror into the dressing table and laid her head down and cried still more heartily until she had no more tears. Then her brain, refreshed and washed clean by her tears, began to work swiftly.
    You can never be a wife in this house, this hard little brain now told her. Do not tease yourself any more with dreams and imaginings. You cannot even be a concubine—their god forbids. But no one knows David as well as you do. You are his possession. Never let him forget it. Be his comfort, his inner need, his solace, his secret laughter.
    She listened to these unspoken words, and she lifted her head, a smile twisting her lips. She opened the mirror and she coiled her hair about one ear and she examined every look of her face and her eyes. After a moment of intense gazing at herself, she changed her pale blue garments for the warm peach-pink ones and put a fresh gardenia in her hair. Then plucking a handful of the flowers for Leah, she presented herself again to the guest. It took all her strength not to be dismayed by the radiance of Leah’s looks, as she now stood arrayed in the scarlet robe. It fitted her well enough, and the golden girdle clasped it to her slender and round waist.
    “How beautiful you look, Lady!” Peony said, smiling at Leah as though with delight while she handed her the flowers. “These are for you. And I will go and tell our mistress that you are ready.”
    She ran away on her little feet as though all she did for Leah was pure joy, and going to Madame Ezra’s court she stood at the door and coughed her delicate little cough, trying not to weep.
    “Come in,” Madame Ezra’s voice said.
    Madame Ezra had finished her breakfast, and now she was making ready to survey the house and especially the kitchens to see that all the servants did their duty, and that nothing was left undone for the Sabbath, next day, which was the day of rest.
    This morning Wang Ma had wakened her with the news that the caravan was so near that it might even reach here before the day was done.
    “The day before the Sabbath!” Madame Ezra had exclaimed. After a moment she had added, “Do not tell Leah—let her not be distracted from what I have to say to her.”
    “Yes, Lady,” Wang Ma had murmured.
    Now Madame Ezra was about to step over the threshold on her task to see that the servants, excited by the news of the caravan, were not careless about the preparations for the Sabbath, when Peony approached, having swallowed her tears and made her face smooth and empty. Madame Ezra sat down again. “Come, come, child,” she said impatiently.
    Peony stepped into the sitting room that Madame Ezra kept for her own. It was a room unlike any other in the house. The walls were hung with striped stuffs from foreign countries and with scripts woven into satin. The furniture was foreign, too, heavy and carved, and the chairs cushioned. The space and emptiness that a Chinese lady would have needed for the peace of her soul and the order of her mind were not here. In the midst of her many possessions Madame Ezra lived content, and Peony could not but grant, though she heartily disliked the room, that there was beauty in it. Had it been smaller, it would have been hideous indeed. But the room was very large, for Madame Ezra when she came here as a bride had taken out two partitions and had thrown three rooms into one long one.
    “Mistress, the young lady is ready,” Peony announced.
    “Where is my son?” Madame Ezra inquired.
    “He was still sleeping when last I looked into his room,” Peony replied.
    She had not seen David last night. This was her own fault, for she had not gone in the evening, as her wont was, to take him tea and to see that his bed was ready for the night. Partly this was