She could not pretend to laugh now. He was sorrowful and resolute and she could not bear to know that his love for her should bring with it trouble to him. “I thank you for telling me what you have in your heart.” Her voice was clear and grave. “I will keep your words in my heart forever. They are my comfort and they make my home.”
She clasped her hands together and she bowed and turned away to leave him.
At the door his voice held her again. “Further than this I have not thought. Yet what is to become of us?”
She paused, one foot on the threshold, her hand on the lintel of the door. “Time will show us,” she said gently, and then fearing lest he step forward to catch her hand or touch her shoulder, and dreading the weakness of love in her heart, she went quickly away.
That night it was impossible to sleep. She was glad that the bright moon that had attended them on their journey was gone. She crept through the darkness into the peach garden, and sat there alone under the trees. The stars were hidden by clouds, and the air was damp with coming rain. Yet she could not sit too long, for soon the mosquitoes began to whine about her. She lifted her wide sleeves and waved them like wings about her, and then she rose and walked to and fro. This walking — it was what Leah used to do, hour after hour, and when she thought of this suddenly Leah was here again and she could not shake off the sense of her presence. Yet why should she be afraid of Leah any more? She had the weapon now to still that ghost forever. If she would, she could go to David at this very hour and seal her love with her body, and what could Leah do to her — Leah, whose flesh was dust? She lifted her face to the dark sky, and ecstasy brimmed her heart. What if she went on silent feet while the house slept and took her advantage of David’s love? The victory would be hers.
She stopped alone in the darkness, her finger to her lip, smiling to herself. Into her secret life in this house he would come, and she would be alone no more. She shook her head and her hand fell and her smile was gone. Her heart beat hard. Why should it be secret? There was no law against a man taking to himself the woman he loved. All through the city men did so, even as Kung Chen had taken his pretty singing girl, who afterward betrayed him. None would raise a cry against David. Indeed, it would be the better for him, for it would bring him closer to his friends. There need be no ceremony. She would yield to her heart and go to him now, and in the morning she would tell Wang Ma and soon all would know, and her mistress could accept it and allow her the second place, or she could refuse to know and all would go on as before.
Thus Peony’s soft heart reasoned. Then her mind, solitary so long, grew hard and clear. Is David like other men? So mind inquired of heart.
At this moment, before she answered, she was suddenly startled by a strange thick cry. She lifted her head to listen, and her thoughts paused. There was no second sound, but feeling herself always responsible for this family, she went at once through the dark garden into the dimly lit great hall, and listened. Ezra’s rooms opened eastward from the hall and his windows into the garden, and she pressed her ear against his closed door. She heard his breathing coming from him in groans, very heavy and slow, and she opened the door softly.
“It is I, Peony!” she called softly. “Are you ill, Old Master?”
He did not answer but his loud breaths came and went as though he dragged them out of his bosom. She ran in then to his bedroom and blew alive the brown paper spill always smoldering in its urn of ashes, and she lit the oil lamp and held it high in her right hand while with the other she pulled aside the curtains. Ezra lay there, his pillow pushed aside, his head thrown back until his beard stood upright into the air. His eyes were open and glazed and his whole face was purple and his back arched and stiff. He did not see or hear her, for his whole attention was fixed upon drawing his breath in and pushing it out again.
“Oh, Heaven!” Peony cried. She dropped the curtain and ran to David’s room and beat upon his door. Then she tried to open it. It was locked! Even in the midst of her terror she paused. Why had he locked the door — except against her? Or perhaps against himself! He heard her now and he answered, “What is it?”
“It is I, Peony!” she cried. “Your father has been smitten down!”
He came out almost at once, tall in his pale night garments, and fastening his silk girdle as he came out he passed her.
“I heard your father cry out — and I went in — being in the peach garden—” She stammered this as she followed him, and they entered Ezra’s room.
There was no sound of breathing now. When David parted the curtains and Peony looked in by his shoulder, she saw the old man lying with his arms and legs flung wide, as though embattled against death. But he had lost. He was dead. His beard lay on his bosom, and his eyes stared up severe and cold. She pushed David aside when she saw those eyes, and with her fingers she drew down the lids, lest they stiffen in that stare until they fell into decay, and she drew his arms to his sides and laid one foot beside the other and covered him. “So that he looks only asleep,” she murmured.
All this time David had stood there. Now he fell upon his knees, and he took one of Ezra’s hands and held it. There was no doubt of death. He knew the moment that he saw his father that there could be no use in doubt. He must rouse the household, call Kung Chen, make the death known through the city. Everything had to be done, but he delayed in disbelief.
“We were talking only a few hours ago,” he muttered.
“It is a good way to die,” Peony said gently. But suddenly she was frightened. Without Ezra in this house, would the heart of kindness be gone from it? Why — why had David locked his door against her? She knelt and put her head down upon the bed and began to weep. “He was so good!” she sobbed. “He was so good — to me!”
She waited, wondering, half heartbroken, if David would put his arm about her shoulder to comfort her. But he did not. Instead he began to stroke his father’s hand gently, as though Ezra still lived.
XIII
SO EZRA BEN ISRAEL died, and he was buried next to his father, and a little above the place where Madame Ezra’s dust mingled with the Chinese earth.
This was the thought that struck itself into David’s mind as he stood beside his father’s open grave. He thought of his mother, and of how strong she had been, and still was, in his being. The struggle that she had maintained all her life to keep herself and her family separate was over now. Death had vanquished her. The early evening air was sweet upon the hillside, and David was not unmindful of the great crowd that stood here with him to see his father buried. He was almost glad that his mother was not living to see how the kindness of Ezra’s many friends had made the funeral so nearly like that of a Chinese official that it would have been hard indeed to discover in it anything of his people. Only in David’s heart was there the knowledge of his own origin. He understood now, for the first time in his life, why his mother had longed so deeply to return to her own land and there be buried. She knew, doubtless, as she knew much beyond what she ever told, that if she died here, her very dust would be lost in the dust of the alien earth. Five layers deep did the cities lie dead under the ground upon which he stood, and generation had built upon generation in this old countryside and no grave could be dug deep enough to escape the ancient dead. His father and his mother were inexorably committed to the common human soil, and nevermore could they belong to a separate people.
The chant of Buddhist priests startled him for a moment. David had earnestly wished to refuse when the abbot of The Temple of the Golden Buddha came to pay his respects to the dead, and he tried to find the courage to say that Buddhism was not the religion of his father. With what courtesy he could muster he had tried to tell the old priest that it would not be fitting to allow Buddhist music at the grave. The abbot had replied with great dignity: