In the other room Peony heard Leah’s footsteps stop. Under her hand she felt David’s heart beating and she stood, her hand on his heart, listening. Then she heard the silence and then she waited. Then she heard the dog growl. She waited again. The next moment she heard the clatter, and she ran on noiseless feet to the curtained door. There Leah lay, her neck half severed and her hair already soaked with blood. The sword was beside her, and the little dog barked on.
“Hush,” Peony said, “hush, Small Dog.”
She stepped into the room and then ran as though ghosts pursued her. Now Peony had bade Leah fetch Madame Ezra, but at this frightful moment she herself had not courage enough to call her. She ran instead for Wang Ma, and she kept silent, not wanting any other to know first what had befallen.
Before she found Wang Ma she found Old Wang. He had taken advantage of the noonday heat, when all slept, to pull a watermelon out of the north well. This melon he had split and now he was enjoying its golden coolness in a quiet and little-used corridor to the kitchen court. Peony had chosen this corridor and so she came upon him. At first he was frightened lest she see the stolen melon; then he perceived that she did not even see what he was doing.
“Where is Wang Ma?” she asked.
“Sleeping under the bamboos yonder.” He pointed with his chin.
Peony hastened on, and soon she saw Wang Ma sitting on a stool and sound asleep, her face on her knees.
“Wang Ma!” she cried in a low and urgent voice.
Wang Ma woke instantly from the light slumber of the watchful servant. She stared at Peony, stupid with sleep, and Peony shook her shoulder.
“Wang Ma — here’s death! The Jewess and our young master quarreled. She flung the sword at him, at his head.”
“Oh, Heaven,” Wang Ma muttered. She jumped up. “Where?” she cried.
“In his courts. Wait! Wang Ma, she turned the sword on herself.”
“Both — dead?” Wang Ma’s voice was a whisper of terror.
“No — only she.”
“Do the old ones know?”
“Shall I tell them, or will you?”
The two women looked at each other. Both were thinking fast.
“I will go and prepare for what the old ones must see,” Wang Ma decided. “Do you go to tell them.”
So they parted, and Peony went to Madame Ezra. It was better to tell her first, she thought, but when she came to the door, there was Ezra too, and so there was nothing but to tell them both.
They cried out at the sight of her face. “What is wrong with you?” Madame Ezra exclaimed.
“Be silent, Naomi,” Ezra commanded her. He rose but Peony beckoned with both her hands. She could not tell them, after all. They must see for themselves. “Come — come — the two of you! Oh — oh!”
She began to weep and to run back again from where she came, and they looked at one another and without another word they hastened after her.
With what fearful hearts did these two parents follow after Peony when they saw her footsteps turn toward David’s court! They said not one word but hastened on and Madame Ezra was ahead.
At the moon gate Peony stopped. “I must tell you …” she began.
But Madame Ezra pushed her aside and went on.
Ezra hesitated. “Is David—?” he asked, and his lips were dry.
“No,” Peony said. “Not he — but oh, Master, be ready — Leah has taken her own life — with that sword!”
Now Ezra cried out and he pushed past her, too, and he followed Madame Ezra and then Peony followed. But the room where Leah had lain was empty. Wang Ma had caught Old Wang by the collar as she passed him and together they had hastened on. Together they had lifted Leah from the floor and they had carried her into the room in the next court where the Rabbi had taught David the Torah, and there upon a couch they laid her and Wang Ma tore a curtain from a door and covered her with it. While she did this Old Wang went back and took off his jacket and sopped up the blood upon the tiles and dipped water from the pool and wiped the place clean.
So now when Madame Ezra looked in she saw only emptiness, and then she hastened into David’s room and there he lay upon his bed. Peony had bound her own white silk girdle about his head to stanch the wound, and he lay as though he slept, but breathing hard and fast. Madame Ezra was wild with fear. She screamed his name and when he did not answer she abused Peony.
“Wait, Naomi,” Ezra commanded her. “We must send for the physician.”
“But why did you not tell me he had wounded himself?” Madame Ezra cried at Peony, and she took the girl by the shoulders and shook her and Ezra had to come between them. Peony did not say a word for she did not blame her mistress. She knew that sorrow distracted Madame Ezra and that it would ease her to let her anger out. Old Wang came in at this moment and Wang Ma too, and Ezra commanded Old Wang to go at once for the physician and Wang Ma to go and brew herbs.
So Peony was left alone to tell what had happened. This she did in a few simple words. Ezra and Madame Ezra listened, their hearts beating, their eyes wide, and Madame Ezra sat down beside David and began chafing his hands, and she said nothing.
“But why did they quarrel?” Ezra asked in sad wonder.
“I do not know,” Peony said. “I thought only of him when I saw him lying there, and while I bound his head she—”
Madame Ezra burst into sudden loud weeping. “Oh, that wicked, wicked girl — and I treated her as though she were my own daughter! What if she has killed my son!”
“Leah was not wicked,” Ezra said sorrowfully. “Something drove her mad — but now we will never know what it was.”
Madame Ezra stopped weeping suddenly. “I shall never forgive her,” she said.
“Even if David lives?” Ezra asked.
“She tried to kill him,” she replied.
At this moment David stirred and opened his eyes, and looked from one face to the other.
“Leah?” he asked faintly.
“Hush!” Madame Ezra said.
“But she — never meant …” His voice trailed away.
“Hush!” Madame Ezra said fiercely.
“Do not speak, my son,” Ezra said. He came near and took David’s hand, and thus the parents waited. But David closed his eyes again and spoke no more. Now Wang Ma brought the bowl of herb tea and a spoon and Peony fed the tea to David slowly until at last the doctor came. He was a small, stooped, silent man and he wore great horn-rimmed spectacles and he smelled of ginger and dried bones.
They rose and stood when he came in and stood waiting and watchful while he examined the wound and felt the pulse and meditated a while.
“Will my son live?” Ezra asked at last.
“He will live,” the physician said, “but for a long time his life will not be secure. The wound is not only of the flesh. His spirit has received a blow.”
“What shall we do?” Madame Ezra implored.
“Give him his way in everything,” the physician answered.
VIII
DAVID WOKE. HE WAS in his bed. It was night and dark except for the glimmer of light from the small bean-oil night lamp set on the table outside the bed curtains. Night? But the sun had been shining!
“Leah,” he called faintly.
Peony heard him instantly. She was sitting on a hard stool, purposely uncomfortable so that she would not doze and would hear the slightest change even in David’s breathing. Now she tiptoed to the bed, parted the curtains, and looked down on him. His waking eyes looked up at her.
“Leah,” he whispered again.
“Leah is asleep,” Peony said.
She took her soft silk handkerchief and wiped his cheeks and lips.
“I feel — weak,” he muttered.
“You need food,” she replied. “Lie still.” She let the curtains fall, and going to a small charcoal brazier set on the table she took the lid from a pot simmering on the coals, and with a long-handled ladle she dipped the soup of rice and red sugar into a bowl. She moved in quietness, soft in all she did, and she went back to the bed.