“Now redeem your promise, my master, for the old one died in the early morning without waking at all, and I have put her in her coffin.”
And Wang Lung thought what man he knew now on his land and he remembered the blubbering lad who had caused Ching’s death, and the one whose teeth were a shelf over his lower lip, and he said,
“Well, and he did not mean the thing he did, and he is as good as any and the only one I can think of now.”
So he sent for the lad and he came, and he was a man grown now, but still he was rude and still his teeth were as they were. And it was Wang Lung’s whim to sit on the raised dais in the great hall and to call the two before him and he said slowly, that he might taste the whole flavor of the strange moment,
“Here, fellow, is this woman, and she is yours if you will have her, and none has known her except the son of my own uncle.”
And the man took her gratefully, for she was a stout wench and good-natured, and he was a man too poor to wed except to such an one.
And Wang Lung came down off the dais and it seemed to him that now his life was rounded off and he had done all that he said he would in his life and more than he could ever have dreamed he could, and he did not know himself how it had all come about. Only now it seemed to him that peace could truly come to him and he could sleep in the sun. It was time for it, also, for he was close to sixty-five years of his age and his grandsons were like young bamboos about him, three the sons of his eldest son, and the eldest of these nearly ten years old, and two the sons of his second son. Well, and there was the third son to wed one day soon, and with that over there was nothing left to trouble him in his life, and he could be at peace.
But there was no peace. It seemed as though the coming of the soldiers had been like the coming of a swarm of wild bees that leave behind them stings wherever they can. The wife of the eldest son and the wife of the second son who had been courteous enough to each other until they lived in one court together, now had learned to hate each other with a great hatred. It was born in a hundred small quarrels, the quarrels of women whose children must live and play together and fight each other like cats and dogs. Each mother flew to the defense of her child, and cuffed the other’s children heartily but spared her own, and her own had always the right in any quarrel, and so the two women were hostile.
And then on that day when the cousin had commended the country wife and laughed at the city wife, that had passed which could not be forgiven. The wife of the elder son lifted her head haughtily when she passed her sister-in-law and she said aloud one day to her husband as she passed,
“It is a heavy thing to have a woman bold and ill-bred in the family, so that a man may call her red meat and she laughs in his face.”
And the second son’s wife did not wait but she answered back loudly,
“Now my sister-in-law is jealous because a man called her only a piece of cold fish!”
And so the two fell to angry looks and hatred, although the elder, being proud of her correctness, would deal only in silent scorn, careful to ignore the other’s very presence. But when her children would go out of their own court she called out,
“I would have you stay away from ill-bred children!”
This she called out in the presence of her sister-in-law who stood within sight in the next court, and that one would call out to her own children,
“Do not play with snakes or you will be bitten!”
So the two women hated each other increasingly, and the thing was the more bitter because the two brothers did not love each other well, the elder always being fearful lest his birth and his family seem lowly in the eyes of his wife who was town bred and better born than he, and the younger fearful lest his brother’s desire for expenditure and place lead them into wasting their heritage before it was divided. Moreover, it was a shame to the elder brother that the second brother knew all the money their father had and what was spent and the money passed through his hands, so that although Wang Lung received and dispensed all the moneys from his lands, still the second brother knew what it was and the elder did not, but must go and ask his father for this and that like a child. So when the two wives hated each other, their hatred spread to the men also and the courts of the two were full of anger and Wang Lung groaned because there was no peace in his house.
Wang Lung had also his own secret trouble with Lotus since the day when he had protected her slave from the son of his uncle. Ever since that day the young maid had been in disfavor with Lotus, and although the girl waited on her silently and slavishly, and stood by her side all day filling her pipe and fetching this and that, and rising in the night at her complaint that she was sleepless and rubbing her legs and her body to soothe her, still Lotus was not satisfied.
And she was jealous of the maid and she sent her from the room when Wang Lung came in and she accused Wang Lung that he looked at the maid. Now Wang Lung had not thought of the girl except as a poor small child who was frightened and he cared as he might care for his poor fool and no more. But when Lotus accused him he took thought to look and he saw it was true that the girl was very pretty and pale as a pear blossom, and seeing this, something stirred in his old blood that had been quiet these ten years and more.
So while he laughed at Lotus saying, “What—are you thinking I am still a-lust, when I do not come into your room thrice a year?” yet he looked sidelong at the girl and he was stirred.
Now Lotus, for all she was ignorant in all ways except the one, in the way of men with women she was learned and she knew that men when they are old will wake once again to a brief youth, and so she was angry with the maid and she talked of selling her to the tea house. But still Lotus loved her comfort and Cuckoo grew old and lazy and the maid was quick and used about the person of Lotus and saw what her mistress needed before she knew it herself, and so Lotus was loath to part with her and yet she would part with her, and in this unaccustomed conflict Lotus was the more angry because of her discomfort and she was more hard than usual to live with. Wang Lung stayed away from her court for many days at a time because her temper was too ill to enjoy. He said to himself that he would wait, thinking it would pass, but meanwhile he thought of the pretty pale young maid more than he himself would believe he did.
Then as though there was not enough trouble with the women of his house all awry, there was Wang Lung’s youngest son. Now his youngest son had been so quiet a lad; so bent on his belated books, that none thought of him except as a reedy slender youth with books always under his arm and an old tutor following him about like a dog.
But the lad had lived among the soldiers when they were there and he had listened to their tales of war and plunder and battle, and he listened rapt to it all, saying nothing. Then he begged novels of his old tutor, stories of the wars of the three kingdoms and of the bandits who lived in ancient times about the Swei Lake, and his head was full of dreams.
So now he went to his father and he said,
“I know what I will do. I will be a soldier and I will go forth to wars.”
When Wang Lung heard this, he thought in great dismay that it was the worst thing that could yet happen to him and he cried out with a great voice,
“Now what madness is this, and am I never to have any peace with my sons!” And he argued with the lad and he tried to be gentle and kindly when he saw the lad’s black brows gather into a line and he said, “My son, it is said from ancient times that men do not take good iron to make a nail nor a good man to make a soldier, and you are my little son, my best little youngest son, and how shall I sleep at night and you wandering over the earth here and there in a war?”
But the boy was determined and he looked at his father and drew down his black brows and he said only,
“I will go.”
Then Wang Lung coaxed him and said,
“Now you may go to any school you like and I will send you to the great schools of the south or even to a foreign school to learn curious things, and you shall go anywhere you l
ike for study if you will not be a soldier. It is a disgrace to a man like me, a man of silver and of land, to have a son who is a soldier.” And when the lad was still silent, he coaxed again, and he said, “Tell your old father why you want to be a soldier?”
And the lad said suddenly, and his eyes were alight under his brows,
“There is to be a war such as we have not heard of—there is to be a revolution and fighting and war such as never was, and our land is to be free!”
Wang Lung listened to this in the greatest astonishment he had yet had from his three sons.
“Now what all this stuff is, I do not know,” he said wondering. “Our land is free already—all our good land is free. I rent it to whom I will and it brings me silver and good grains and you eat and are clothed and are fed with it, and I do not know what freedom you desire more than you have.”
But the boy only muttered bitterly,
“You do not understand—you are too old—you understand nothing.”
And Wang Lung pondered and he looked at this son of his and he saw the suffering young face, and he thought to himself,
“Now I have given this son everything, even his life. He has everything from me. I have let him leave the land, even, so that I have not a son after me to see to the land, and I have let him read and write although there is no need for it in my family with two already.” And he thought and he said to himself further, still staring at the lad, “Everything this son has from me.”
Then he looked closely at his son and he saw that he was tall as a man already, though still reedy with youth, and he said, doubtfully, muttering and half-aloud, for he saw no sign of lust in the boy,
“Well, it may be he needs one thing more.” And he said aloud then and slowly, “Well, and we will wed you soon, my son.”
But the boy flashed a look of fire at his father from under his heavy gathered brows and he said scornfully,
“Then I will run away indeed, for to me a woman is not answer to everything as it is to my elder brother!”
Wang Lung saw at once that he was wrong and so he said hastily to excuse himself,
“No—no—we will not wed you—but I mean, if there is a slave you desire—”
And the boy answered with lofty looks and with dignity, folding his arms on his breast,
“I am not the ordinary young man. I have my dreams. I wish for glory. There are women everywhere.” And then as though he remembered something he had forgotten, he suddenly broke from his dignity and his arms dropped and he said in his usual voice, “Besides, there never were an uglier set of slaves than we have. If I cared—but I do not—well, there is not a beauty in the courts except perhaps the little pale maid who waits on the one in the inner courts.”
Then Wang knew he spoke of Pear Blossom and he was smitten with a strange jealousy. He suddenly felt himself older than he was—a man old and too thick of girth and with whitening hair, and he saw his son a man slim and young, and it was not for this moment father and son, but two men, one old and one young, and Wang Lung said angrily,
“Now keep off the slaves—I will not have the rotten ways of young lords in my house. We are good stout country folk and people with decent ways, and none of this in my house!”
Then the boy opened his eyes and lifted his black brows and shrugged his shoulders and he said to his father,
“You spoke of it first!” and then he turned away and went out.
Then Wang Lung sat there alone in his room by his table and he felt dreary and alone, and he muttered to himself,
“Well, and I have no peace anywhere in my house.”
He was confused with many angers, but, although he could not understand why, this anger stood forth most clearly; his son had looked on a little pale young maid in the house and had found her fair.
33
WANG LUNG COULD NOT cease from his thought of what his youngest son had said of Pear Blossom and he watched the maid incessantly as she came and went and without his knowing it the thought of her filled his mind and he doted on her. But he said nothing to anyone.
One night in the early summer of that year, at the time when the night air is thick and soft with the mists of warmth and fragrance, he sat at rest in his own court alone under a flowering cassia tree and the sweet heavy scent of the cassia flowers filled his nostrils and he sat there and his blood ran full and hot like the blood of a young man. Through the day he had felt his blood so and he had been half of a mind to walk out on his land and feel the good earth under his feet and take off his shoes and his stockings and feel it on his skin.
This he would have done but he was ashamed lest men see him, who was no longer held a farmer within the gates of the town, but a landowner and a rich man. So he wandered restlessly about the courts and he stayed away altogether from the court where Lotus sat in the shade and smoked her water pipe, because well she knew when a man was restless and she had sharp eyes to see what was amiss. He went alone, then, and he had no mind to see either of his two quarreling daughters-in-law, nor even his grandchildren, in whom was his frequent delight.
So the day had passed very long and lonely and his blood was full and coursing under his skin. He could not forget his youngest son, how he had looked standing tall and straight and his black brows drawn together in the gravity of his youth, and he could not forget the maid. And to himself he said,
“I suppose they are of an age—the boy must be well on eighteen and she not over eighteen.”
Then he remembered that he himself would before many years be seventy and he was ashamed of his coursing blood, and he thought,
“It would be a good thing to give the maid to the lad,” and this he said to himself again and again, and every time he said it the thing stabbed like a thrust on flesh already sore, and he could not but stab and yet he could not but feel the pain.
And so the day passed very long and lonely for him.
When night came he was still alone and he sat in his court alone and there was not one in all his house to whom he could go as friend. And the night air was thick and soft and hot with the smell of the flowers of the cassia tree.
And as he sat there in the darkness under the tree one passed beside where he was sitting near the gate of his court where the tree stood, and he looked quickly and it was Pear Blossom.
“Pear Blossom!” he called, and his voice came in a whisper.
She stopped suddenly, her head bent in listening.
Then he called again and his voice would scarcely come from his throat,
“Come here to me!”
Then hearing him she crept fearfully through the gate and stood before him and he could scarcely see her standing there in the blackness, but he could feel her there and he put out his hand and laid hold of her little coat and he said, half choking,
“Child—!”
There he stopped with the word. He said to himself that he was an old man and it was a disgraceful thing for a man with grandsons and granddaughters nearer to this child’s age than he was, and he fingered her little coat.
Then she, waiting, caught from him the heat of his blood and she bent over and slipped, like a flower crumpling upon its stalk, to the ground, and she clasped his feet and lay there. And he said slowly,
“Child—I am an old man—a very old man—”
And she said, and her voice came out of the darkness like the very breath of the cassia tree,
“I like old men—I like old men—they are so kind—”
He said again, tenderly, stooping to her a little,
“A little maid like you should have a tall straight youth—a little maid like you!” And in his heart he added, “Like my son—” but aloud he could not say it, because he might put the thought into her mind, and he could not bear it.
But she said,
“Young men are not kind—they are only fierce.”
And hearing her small childish voice quavering up from about his feet his heart welled up in a great wave of love for this maid, and he took
her and raised her gently, and then led her into his own courts.
When it was done, this love of his age astonished him more than any of his lusts before, for with all his love for Pear Blossom he did not seize upon her as he had seized upon the others whom he had known.
No, he held her gently and he was satisfied to feel her light youth against his heavy old flesh, and he was satisfied merely with the sight of her in the day and with the touch of her fluttering coat against his hand and with the quiet resting of her body near him in the night. And he wondered at the love of old age, which is so fond and so easily satisfied.
As for her, she was a passionless maid and she clung to him as to a father, and to him she was indeed more than half child and scarcely woman.
Now the thing that Wang Lung had done did not quickly come out, for he said nothing at all, and why should he, being master in his own house?
But the eye of Cuckoo marked it first and she saw the maid slipping at dawn out of his court and she laid hold on the girl and laughed, and her old hawk’s eyes glittered.
“Well!” she said. “And so it is the Old Lord over again!”
And Wang Lung in his room, hearing her, girded his robe about him quickly and he came out and smiled sheepishly and half proudly and he said muttering,
“Well, and I said she had better take a young lad and she would have the old one!”
“It will be a pretty thing to tell the mistress,” Cuckoo said, then, and her eyes sparkled with malice.
“I do not know myself how the thing happened,” answered Wang Lung slowly. “I had not meant to add another woman to my courts, and the thing came about of itself.” Then when Cuckoo said, “Well, and the mistress must be told,” Wang Lung, fearing the anger of Lotus more than anything, begged Cuckoo and he said again, “Do you tell her, if you will, and if you can manage it without anger to my face I will give you a handful of money for it.”
So Cuckoo, still laughing and shaking her head, promised, and Wang Lung went back to his court and he would not come forth for a while until Cuckoo came back and said,