Wang Ma and Old Wang had gone out during the eating of the eggs and the other servants with them, and at this moment they pulled back the curtains and a procession of servants came in bearing dishes of all kinds of fish and fowl and meat, except pork, and set them upon the table in a wide circle. Taking up his chopsticks, Ezra waved them and urged all to begin, and he himself placed upon the bowls of the Rabbi and Leah those tidbits that he thought most delicious.
So all ate and Ezra ate and drank until the veins stood out red on his neck, the whole time talking and merry and pressing food on everyone. Of all of them, only Aaron sat silent and pale. Yet he ate voraciously and quickly, as though he had not for a long time had enough, and Leah looked at him reproachfully for his greediness, but he did not heed her. Once, catching her eyes, he made a sullen face at her, and this David saw with indignation, but he said nothing. He searched with his chopsticks and found a tender bit of flesh on his own plate, and he put it on Leah’s plate for her. This Peony saw.
The feast went on its usual course. Ezra grew merry as he ate and drank, and even Madame Ezra laughed at his jokes and nonsense. The Rabbi smiled his dim high smile and Aaron snickered and David threw back joke for joke and Leah laughed with joy, until David began to crack his jokes only to make her laugh the more, while his parents admired him. This Peony saw.
She made no sign. A sweet fixed smile was set upon her lips and she busied herself, dismissing the servants at last. Alone she kept the wine cups filled and replenished the sweetmeats until the feast was over and the guests gone. Then she ran ahead and made ready David’s bed, turning down the silken quilts and loosening the embroidered curtains from the heavy silver hooks. But she did not stay to greet him. She went away to her own room, and upon her narrow bed she lay long awake, remembering David’s face as he had turned to Leah, and remembering, she could not sleep.
The next morning Peony woke early, and there upon her eyelids was still the memory of David’s face when he had looked at Leah the night before. How foolish I am! she thought restlessly. She rose and washed and dressed herself and braided her hair freshly, and having made her room neat for the day she went into the peach-tree garden. It lay in the silence of the spring morning. Under the early sun the dew still hung in a bright mist on the grass, and the pool in the center of the garden was brimming its stone walls. The water was clear and the fish were flashing their golden sides near the surface.
The great low-built house that surrounded the garden was still in sleep. Birds twittered in the eaves undisturbed and a small Pekingese dog slept on the threshold like a small lioness. She had lifted her head alertly at the sound of a sliding panel, and when she saw Peony, she got up and moved with majesty toward her mistress, waiting in the path until Peony stooped and touched her head with delicate fingers.
“Hush, Small Dog,” she said in a low voice. “Everyone is asleep.”
The dog, receiving the caress without humility, lay down again, and Peony stood smiling and gazing about her with delight, as though she had never seen the garden before, although she had lived so many years in this house. Once again, as often before had happened, the oppression of the night vanished. The many joys of her life grew bright again with the morning. She enjoyed comfort, she loved beauty, and of both this house had much. If she were not in the main stream of its warmth and affection, yet the abundance of both overflowed upon her. She put aside her fears of the night, and then, tiptoeing along the stone path, she approached a peach tree about to bloom at last, and began to cut a branch with a pair of iron scissors she had brought with her. Her coat and trousers of pink satin were the same shade as the blossoms, and in the midst of pale pink and tender green, her black hair, combed in a long braid and coiled over one ear and fringed above her forehead, her large black eyes, and her ivory skin made her face as clearcut as a carving. She was slender and short, and her round face was demure. Her eyes were lively, the black pupils unusually large, the whites very clear, and her mouth was small, full, and red. Her hands, stretched above her head, were dexterous, and her pink sleeves, falling away, showed round pretty arms.
She had barely cut the branch when she heard her name called.
“Peony!”
She turned and saw David as he came from another part of the garden, and instantly all her hurt was gone. Did she not know him as none other did? He was tall, almost a man, but behind his new height she saw him the child she had always known. His height showed him foreign, she thought, and so did his full dark eyes and his curling dark hair, his skin dark, but without the golden tinge of a Chinese. This morning he wore a Chinese robe of thin dark blue silk tied about him with a white silk girdle, and she thought of him as her own. His handsome mouth was pouting and still childish.
“Why didn’t you answer me when I called?” he demanded.
Peony put her finger to her lips. “Oh — you promised me you wouldn’t come into the garden after me!” she breathed. “Young Master,” she added.
In a low voice he demanded fiercely, “You have never called me Master — why have you changed since yesterday?”
Peony busied herself with peach blossoms. “Yesterday your mother told me I must call you Young Master.” Her voice was faltering and shy, but her black eyes, dancing under their long straight lashes, were naughty. “We are grownup now, your mother said.”
It was true that yesterday morning Madame Ezra, beset by a gust of temper in the midst of preparations for the feast, had rebuked Peony suddenly.
“Where is David to sit?” Peony had asked, very carelessly.
“Dare to call my son by his name!” Madame Ezra had cried.
“But, Lady, have I not always so called his name?” Peony had asked.
“Let it be so no more,” Madame Ezra had replied. “You should have been the first to know that you are not children now.” She had paused and then had gone on, “And while I speak, here is more — you are no longer to go to his room, for any cause, if he is there — or he to yours. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, Mistress.” Peony had turned away to hide her tears, and Madame Ezra had relented.
“I do not blame you, child, for growing up,” she announced. “But I teach you this: Whatever happens is always the woman’s fault.”
“Yes, Mistress,” Peony had said again.
“Oh, you know my mother,” David now grumbled.
Peony darted a shrewd look at him. “She will scold you for wearing your robe tied around you like that. Only yesterday she told me I must help you to be neat—‘a bondmaid’s duty,’ she said.”
She put the peach blossoms carefully on the ground as she spoke and went to him. He laughed a young man’s laughter, lazy, amorous, teasing, and standing beside her, he submitted to her nimble fingers. He was so tall that he shielded her from the house, but he threw a quick look over his shoulder.
“Whose bondmaid are you?” he demanded.
She lifted her long lashes. “Yours,” she said. Then her lips twitched. “That’s not to say I’m worth much! You know what I cost when they bought me for you — a hundred dollars and a suit of clothes.”
“That was when you were a skinny thing of eight,” he teased. “Now you’re worth — let’s see — seventeen, pretty, but very disobedient and still a handful of a girl. Why, you must be worth ten times as much!”
“Be still,” she commanded him. “This button is almost off. Come with me and I will sew it on.”
“Come to your room?”
She shook her head. “Your mother said that was to stop.”
“You come to my room,” he urged.
She shook her head, hesitated, and they heard a panel slide. Instantly he slipped into the twisting path behind a tall rock, and Peony stooped to pick up the peach blossoms. It was only Wang Ma, who came to sweep the threshold.