Free Peony: A Novel of China by Pearl S. Buck

another. She went back to her bed and lay quietly, her hands clasped under her head.
    She tried for a while to think of what her father had said, how she was to be God’s instrument, but she doubted that this could be, however much she longed for it to be true. She had been too busy since her mother died to read the Torah as much as she should. It was long ago that she had been left, so long that she could not remember her mother’s face unless she put everything else out of her mind. Then against the gray curtain of the past she thought she could see a pale thin face, the eyes too large and too black, and the thin mouth sad. But she could remember very well this one thing her mother had told her, when she called her in the last night she lived.
    “Take care of your father, Leah—and Aaron.”
    “Yes, Mother,” she had sobbed.
    “Oh, child,” her mother had gasped suddenly, “think of yourself—for no one else will.”
    Those were her mother’s last words, and Leah did not know what they meant then or now. How could she care for others if she thought of herself? She sighed and put away this question that she had never answered, and she began to think instead of David.
    Her mind roamed, remembering him as far back as she could, when perhaps once in a month Wang Ma had come for her and had taken her to Madame Ezra, to be looked at, to be questioned, and then to be given sweets and fruit and released to play in the courts with David, the beautiful little boy, always so richly dressed, so gay, so charming. Her memory of him was one of laughter so continuing that wherever he was, the very air was bright with his presence. Her own home had been always sad, her father absorbed in scriptures and prayers, and Aaron whining and half ill, dependent upon her and cruel to her at the same time. And they were poor, always poor, and she had had to patch and mend and save and learn as best she could how to cook and clean. There had been a servant woman in her childhood, but she had gone away when Leah was not more than twelve, and since then she had been alone except for an old Chinese man who did the marketing and made a small kitchen garden in the back court and took out garbage and the waste from the household. He was a deaf-mute and lived out his days in silence.
    The house of Ezra was therefore the one happy place of her childhood, and she could not but be glad that it was God’s will, and her father’s, that now she return to it. But I shall come home often, she thought, and I shall make everything here much better than it has ever been. And if I really do marry David—
    Here her thoughts grew shy and humble. If she did, if such heaven were granted to her, she would thank God all her life and be so good that He would never regret it. She would move David’s heart to rebuild the synagogue and to fulfill all her father’s dreams. The remnant of their people, who were so scattered, would be brought together again in the new synagogue, and David would be the leader of them, and Aaron would be looked after and helped, and perhaps he would grow better than she feared, and all would be well—with everybody, she thought fervently.
    Somewhere on the edge of her dreams there stood the shadow of a young Chinese girl, the little girl who had played near David, a pretty child with big almond-shaped eyes and a small red mouth. This child gradually became a slender young girl, still more pretty, who served David and her with tea and plied them with cakes, and was always near. Peony—Peony! But Peony, Leah reminded herself, was only a bondmaid.
    And so near dawn Leah fell asleep, her cheek on her folded hands, and Rachel, stealing in, had not the heart to wake her. The good woman went into the kitchen and started the fire in the charcoal stove and heated water and set rice to boil for breakfast, and cracked three eggs into a bowl.
    She did not waken Leah, indeed, until she heard the clatter of someone at the gate, and when she opened