“As long as she is no more to you than a sister I will not complain,” Ezra said.
This speech was so plain that David was confounded by it. It probed him too deeply, beyond what he himself was willing to know, and he did not answer it. He looked at the candles and saw them guttering and he made excuse to rise and use the snuffers on them.
“It is late!” he exclaimed. “Tomorrow I must be early at the shops, Father, and so I will say good night.”
Wang Ma had been waiting outside the door, and when she heard this she came in with the fresh tea and the rice gruel that Ezra drank before he slept, and so the day was over.
But for David there was no sleep. He did not go to his wife. Instead he stayed in his room, finding there every sign of Peony’s thought for him, the bedquilt folded, the curtains drawn, the teapot hot, his pipe prepared, the candles trimmed. But she herself had gone.
He made himself ready for bed and he put out the candles and parted the curtains and laid himself down. Still he could not sleep. His father’s talk had stirred afresh all that had been in his mind these many weeks on the journey. His mother, Leah, Peony, Kueilan, these four women who had somehow between them shaped his life were shaping him still. He longed to be free of them all, and yet he knew that no man is ever free of the women who have made him what he is. He sighed and tossed and wished for the day when he could return to the shops and the men there who had nothing to do with his heart and his soul.
Peony, too, was restless that night. David had been long with his father, she knew, for Wang Ma told her that the two were talking gravely hour after hour and she dared not go in, even though it was long past midnight. She had waited with Wang Ma, outwardly to keep her company but secretly because she hoped to see David’s face at least as he passed. Yet he had not seen her, and she had not dared to call him. She sat in the dark court outside the range of the mild candlelight flowing through the open door and beyond, hearing their voices, and he passed her so closely that she could have touched him, but she did not put out her hand. Doubtless he had told his father why they had left Peking, and perhaps Ezra had reproached him. Well she knew that danger of trouble from the Chief Steward was not past, even here, and she shrank from being the cause of it.
When David had gone she went to bed herself, and lying alone in the moonless summer night, she considered her plight. Rich folk could be kind, as the Ezra family had always been kind to her, but if one of the lesser ones to whom they were kind should also become a trouble, their hearts could cool quickly. She remembered how she had thought that David loved her, perhaps, and she thought of the look in his eyes sometimes. Then she remembered how cold he had been all these weeks. Doubtless he regrets already what I have compelled him to do, she told herself.
Pride came to her help again, and she decided that at the very first moment he allowed her, she would go to David and tell him that she wished to enter the Buddhist nunnery that stood inside the city gate. There she would be safe from any man, and he could send word somehow to the Chief Steward that she had long been dedicated and only waiting for the journey north to be finished before she became a nun. Inside that quiet haven, where only women lived, she would be safe, and it seemed sweet to her.
The more she thought of this plan, the better she considered it to be, and she held it in her mind for a few days until the first rush of David’s business was over. Yet she dared not be silent long, lest that strong soft hand from the Imperial Palace should bring trouble in its grasp.
On the fifth day she saw David linger after his noon meal as though he were not in haste to return to the shops. Ezra went to sleep on the long couch that in this summer weather was set under the bamboos, and Wang Ma sat by him to keep the flies away. The children slept, the servants slept, and her mistress too was sleeping. Peony had made it her business today to superintend the noon meal, and while the underservants took the dishes away, she handed the bamboo toothpicks to David and she said, “Will you not sleep a while, too? The air is heavy and there are thunderclouds in the south.”
“I will sleep an hour in my own court,” he replied.
Thither she went to set a bamboo couch under an old pine tree there, and while she was spreading a soft mat over it, David came in. He had taken off his robes when he came in and he wore his inner garments of pale green silk.
“All is ready,” Peony said, and she prepared to leave him. The day was so hot that clear little rills of sweat ran down her cheeks and she wiped them away and laughed. “I am melting!” she exclaimed.
Her eyes met David’s unconsciously, and instantly her laughter died. She had never seen him look at her thus. His eyes were on her passionately, grave and warm. The red flew into her cheeks and her knees trembled. Her tongue began to speak at random, without her mind, and yet repeating what her mind had been thinking.
“I have — have been — looking for the moment — to — to say something.” So she began.
“This moment,” David said.
She clasped her hands in front of her. “I–I have wept so much—”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because of what happened in the capital.” Her words rushed out now, hurrying to be said. “I want to ask you — I beg you — I would die if I had brought harm to you, or even a little trouble. I can — I will — go into the Buddhist nunnery. It is safe there, and you could tell the — the Chief Steward — I am to be a nun.”
“You a nun!” David cried in a low voice. He laughed silently, as though he wanted no one to hear him.
Yet who was there to hear? The house was sleeping and around them the hot afternoon sun shone down. There was not a sound even from outside the walls. The city slept and the very cicadas were still. And Peony stood before David as though she were caught fast in a web. She did not try to speak again. She could not, indeed.
What had brought him to this moment she could not imagine. She was amazed and fearful and love heated her veins and throbbed in her heart. He whom she had thought so cold all these weeks was suddenly all molten fire.
“Peony, follow me,” he commanded her.
He turned and she followed him into his sitting room. He leaned against the table and faced her. “I tell you this now and it must last our lives through. If I tell you, will you remember?”
“Yes,” she whispered, and her eyes did not waver from his.
“I have cheated myself all these years by saying you were like my sister,” he said. “I have been a fool. You have never been like my sister. Never could I have loved a sister as I loved you when we were children — and as I love you now.”
He looked at her steadily and she returned his look. This was the gift life gave her, this moment when he spoke these words. It would have been easy to put out both hands and take the gift, forgetting all else. But this was not possible for Peony. Too many years had she taken care of him and shielded him and strengthened him, planned for him and loved him. She could not think of herself now.
She tried to laugh. “All the more reason for me to be a nun, I think!”
He put aside her pretense at mirth. “Do not escape me by laughter,” he said sternly. “I know as well as you do what it means for me to — to say what I have said. Yet I had to say it so that you know now why I could not leave you in the palace. As long as I live you must stay in my house, Peony, for I cannot live without you. I know it at last.”
“Is this why you have been so cold to me all these weeks on the journey?” she asked.
“I was not cold to you. I was thinking of you, by day and by night,” he replied.