Peony: A Novel of China Read Online Free PDF

pleasures of being a rich man’s wife and had eaten until she had in her age grown immensely fat, her pretty features sunk in mounds of rosy flesh, she had actually given up nothing of her own ways, and had even influenced the man she had married. Old Israel ben Abram, as the years passed, had begun to neglect the feast days once carefully observed in the house, and compromise became his habit. But when his Chinese wife died, leaving his son Ezra a boy of fifteen, in an excess of remorse and smitten conscience he had betrothed him to Naomi, daughter of a leader of the little colony of Jews in the Chinese city.
    Ezra, at that time indolent and romantic, had yielded. Naomi was handsome and there was something fascinating in her cool young strength. After their marriage, he found the habit of compromise, taught him by his Chinese mother, a practical weapon. Naomi was too strong. It was with compromise that his brain was now busy.
    Madame Ezra spoke suddenly. “Ezra, open your eyes—you look foolish.”
    “Certainly, my dear,” he replied. He opened his eyes.
    “Not so wide, stupid!” Madame Ezra said impatiently.
    He drooped his lids and his lips twitched with secret laughter. She threw him a sharp look and he caught it as though it were a glass ball and threw it back at her. She looked away.
    “David is a long time in coming,” she remarked.
    “He may have been on the street somewhere, Lady,” Wang Ma hastened to reply. Every servant in the house rallied to the defense of the young lord.
    Before there could be an answer they heard his footsteps. Peony preceded him, drawing aside the scarlet satin curtain with delicate fingers. He stood there, tall and dark, his impetuous eyes searching the two faces now turned to him.
    “You sent for me, Father—Mother—”
    “Come in and sit down, my son,” Ezra said kindly.
    “Where have you been?” his mother asked at the same time.
    He answered neither of them. He sat down near his father and Peony poured him a bowl of tea and silently set it on the table beside him. Then she took her usual place behind Ezra and drawing the fan again from her sleeve, she opened it and began to move it slowly to and fro. Her eyes were half hidden beneath her drooped lids. David looked at her and away again. It was impossible to discern from that smooth pearly surface what thoughts flowed beneath.
    “David, it is time—” Madame Ezra began.
    The young man whirled around on his seat. “Time for what?” he demanded.
    “You know, my son,” Madame Ezra said. She humbled herself, she made her voice pleading, knowing full well how easily this beloved only child could harden himself.
    “I don’t know, Mother,” he retorted.
    Madame Ezra pleaded, “Leah is eighteen, David. And you are a man. And I promised her mother.”
    “Your promises have nothing to do with me,” he said shortly.
    “But you have always known—” Madame Ezra reminded him.
    “I do not know now,” he interrupted her. “Besides, I don’t love Leah.”
    “Shame on you!” Madame Ezra cried. “Last night you were friendly enough.”
    “This morning I remember her nose is too long,” David said.
    Madame Ezra spread out her hands and rolled her eyes from one face to the other. “She is a good girl—pretty, too—and learned in our faith. She will be a light in this house after I am gone.”
    “Still her nose is too long,” David insisted.
    It had become a habit for him to oppose his mother, and he did so unreasonably now. He knew well enough that Leah’s nose was a handsome one, and had his mother kept silent, he might have remembered only Leah’s beauty. But he was still childish enough to want to be free at all costs, and now he glared stubbornly at his mother and then laughed.
    “Don’t marry me off so young, Mother,” he cried gaily.
    Ezra laughed out loud. Peony allowed herself the smallest of smiles. Wang Ma’s face was expressionless. Madame Ezra felt no support. She bit her lip, sighed, and