Peony: A Novel of China Read Free

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