The Good Earth (25 page)

When he came in at noon and at night he ate well of the food which O-lan prepared for him, good rice and cabbage and beancurd, and good garlic rolled into wheat bread. When Lotus held her small nose under her hand at his coming and cried out at his reek, he laughed and cared nothing and he breathed out his stout breath at her and she must bear it as she could for he would eat of what he liked. And now that he was full of health again and free of the sickness of his love he could go to her and be finished with her and turn himself to other things.

So these two women took their place in his house: Lotus for his toy and his pleasure and to satisfy his delight in beauty and in smallness and in the joy of her pure sex, and O-lan for his woman of work and the mother who had borne his sons and who kept his house and fed him and his father and his children. And it was a pride to Wang Lung in the village that men mentioned with envy the woman in his inner court; it was as though men spoke of a rare jewel or an expensive toy that was useless except that it was sign and symbol of a man who had passed beyond the necessity of caring only to be fed and clothed and could spend his money on joy if he wished.

And foremost among the men in the village who exclaimed over his prosperity was his uncle, for his uncle in these days was like a dog who fawns and desires to win favor. He said,

“There is my nephew, who keeps such an one for his pleasure as none of we common men have even seen.” And again he said, “And he goes in to his woman, who wears robes of silk and satin like a lady in a great house. I have not seen it, but my woman tells me.” And again he said, “My nephew, the son of my brother, is founding a great house and his sons will be the sons of a rich man and they need not work all their lives long.”

Then men of the village, therefore, looked upon Wang Lung with increasing respect and they talked to him no more as to one of themselves but as to one who lived in a great house, and they came to borrow money of him at interest and to ask his advice concerning the marriage of their sons and daughters, and if any two had a dispute over the boundary of a field, Wang Lung was asked to settle the dispute and his decision was accepted, whatever it was.

Where Wang Lung had been busy with his love, then, he was now satisfied of it and was busied with many things. The rains came in season and the wheat sprouted and grew and the year turned to winter and Wang Lung took his harvests to the markets, for he saved his grain until prices were high, and this time he took with him his eldest son.

Now there is a pride a man has when he sees his eldest son reading aloud the letters upon a paper and putting the brush and ink to paper and writing that which may be read by others, and this pride Wang Lung now had. He stood proudly and saw this happen and he would not laugh when the clerks, who had scorned him before, now cried out,

“Pretty characters the lad makes and he is a clever one!”

No, Wang Lung would not pretend it was anything out of the common that he had a son like this, although when the lad said sharply as he read, “Here is a letter that has the wood radical when it should have the water radical,” Wang Lung’s heart was fit to burst with pride, so that he was compelled to turn aside and cough and spit upon the floor to save himself. And when a murmur of surprise ran among the clerks at his son’s wisdom he called out merely,

“Change it, then! We will not put our name to anything wrongly written.”

And he stood proudly and watched while his son took up the brush and changed the mistaken sign.

When it was finished and his son had written his father’s name on the deed of sale of the grain and upon the receipt of the moneys, the two walked home together, father and son, and the father said within his heart that now his son was a man and his eldest son, and he must do what was right for his son, and he must see to it that there was a wife chosen and betrothed for his son so that the lad need not go begging into a great house as he had and pick up what was left there and what no one wanted, for his son was the son of a man who was rich and who owned land in his right.

Wang Lung set himself, therefore, to the seeking of a maid who might be his son’s wife, and it was no slight task, for he would have no one who was a common and ordinary female. He talked of it one night to Ching, after the two of them had been alone in the middle room, taking account of what must be bought for spring planting and of what they had of their own seed. He talked not as one who expects great help, for he knew Ching was too simple, but still he knew the man was faithful as a good dog is faithful to its master, and it was relief to speak what he thought to such an one.

Ching stood humbly as Wang Lung sat at the table and spoke, for in spite of Wang Lung’s urging, he would not, now that Wang Lung had become rich, sit in his presence as though they were equal, and he listened with fixed attention as Wang Lung spoke of his son and of the one he sought, and when Wang Lung was finished, Ching sighed and he said in his hesitant voice that was scarcely more than a whisper,

“And if my poor girl were here and sound you might have her for nothing at all and my gratitude, too, but where she is I do not know, and it may be she is dead and I do not know.”

Then Wang Lung thanked him, but he forbore to say what was in his heart, that for his son there must be one far higher than the daughter of such an one as Ching, who although a good man was, besides that, only a common farmer on another’s land.

Wang Lung kept his own counsel, therefore, only listening here and there in the tea shop when maids were spoken of, or men prosperous in the town who had daughters for marriage. But to his uncle’s wife he said nothing, guarding his purpose from her. For she was well enough when he had need of a woman from a tea house for himself. She was such an one to arrange a matter like that. But for his son he would have no one like his uncle’s wife, who could not know anyone he considered fit for his eldest son.

The year deepened into snow and the bitterness of winter and the New Year’s festival came and they ate and drank, and men came to see Wang Lung, not only from the countryside but now from the town also, to wish him fortune, and they said,

“Well, and there is no fortune we can wish you greater than you have, sons in your house and women and money and land.”

And Wang Lung, dressed in his silken robe with his sons in good robes beside him on either hand, and sweet cakes and watermelon seeds and nuts upon the table, and red paper signs pasted upon his doors everywhere for the New Year and coming prosperity, knew that his fortune was good.

But the year turned to spring and the willows grew faintly green and the peach trees budded pink, and Wang Lung had not yet found the one he sought for his son.

Spring came in long, warm days scented with blossoming plum and cherry, and the willow trees sprouted their leaves fully and unfolded them, and the trees were green and the earth was moist and steaming and pregnant with harvest, and the eldest son of Wang Lung changed suddenly and ceased to be a child. He grew moody and petulant and would not eat this and that and he wearied of his books, and Wang Lung was frightened and did not know what to make of it and talked of a doctor.

There was no correction that could be made of the lad at all, for if his father said to him with anything beyond coaxing, “Now eat of the good meat and rice,” the lad turned stubborn and melancholy, and if Wang Lung was angry at all, he burst into tears and fled from the room.

Wang Lung was overcome with surprise and he could make nothing of it, so that he went after the lad and he said gently as he was able,

“I am your father and now tell me what is in your heart.” But the lad did nothing except sob and shake his head violently.

Moreover, he took a dislike to his old teacher and would not in the mornings rise out of his bed to go to school unless Wang Lung bawled at him or even beat him, and then he went sullenly and sometimes he spent whole days idling about the streets of the town, and Wang Lung only knew it at night, when the younger boy said spitefully,

“Elder Brother was not in school today.”

Wang Lung was angry at his eldest son then and he shouted at him,

“And am I to spend good silver for nothing?”

And in his anger he fell upon the boy with a bamboo and beat him until O-lan, the boy’s mother, heard it and rushed in from the kitchen and stood between her son and his father so that the blows rained upon her in spite of Wang Lung’s turning this way and that to get at the boy. Now the strange thing was that whereas the boy might burst into weeping at a chance rebuke, he stood these beatings under the bamboo without a sound, his face carven and pale as an image. And Wang Lung could make nothing of it, although he thought of it night and day.

He thought of it one evening thus after he had eaten his night’s food, because on that day he had beaten his eldest son for not going to the school, and while he thought, O-lan came into the room. She came in silently and she stood before Wang Lung and he saw she had that which she wished to say. So he said,

“Say on. What is it, mother of my son?”

And she said, “It is useless for you to beat the lad as you do. I have seen this thing come upon the young lords in the courts of the great house, and it came on them melancholy, and when it came the Old Lord found slaves for them if they had not found any for themselves and the thing passed easily.”

“Now and it need not be so,” answered Wang Lung in argument. “When I was a lad I had no such melancholy and no such weepings and tempers, and no slaves, either.”

O-lan waited and then she answered slowly, “I have not indeed seen it thus except with young lords. You worked on the land. But he is like a young lord and he is idle in the house.”

Wang Lung was surprised, after he had pondered a while, for he saw truth in what she said. It was true that when he himself was a lad there was no time for melancholy, for he had to be up at dawn for the ox and out with the plow and the hoe and at harvest he must needs work until his back broke, and if he wept he could weep for no one heard him, and he could not run away as his son ran away from school, for if he did there was nothing for him to eat on return, and so he was compelled to labor. He remembered all this and he said to himself,

“But my son is not thus. He is more delicate than I was, and his father is rich and mine was poor, and there is no need for his labor, for I have labor in my fields, and besides, one cannot take a scholar such as my son is and set him to the plow.”

And he was secretly proud that he had a son like this and so he said to O-lan,

“Well, and if he is like a young lord it is another matter. But I cannot buy a slave for him. I will betroth him and we will marry him early, and there is that to be done.”

Then he rose and went in to the inner court.

N
OW LOTUS, SEEING WANG
Lung distraught in her presence, and thinking of things other than her beauty, pouted and said,

“If I had known that in a short year you could look at me and not see me, I would have stayed in the tea house.” And she turned her head away as she spoke and looked at him out of the corner of her eyes so that he laughed and seized her hand and he put it against his face and smelled of its fragrance and he answered,

“Well, and a man cannot always think of the jewel he has sewn on his coat, but if it were lost he could not bear it. These days I think of my eldest son and of how his blood is restless with desire and he must be wed and I do not know how to find the one he should wed. I am not willing that he marry any of the daughters of the village farmers, nor is it meet, seeing that we bear the common name of Wang. Yet I do not know one in the town well enough to say to him, ‘Here is my son and there is your daughter,’ and I am loath to go to a professional matchmaker, lest there be some bargain she has made with a man who has a daughter deformed or idiot.”

Now Lotus, since the eldest son had grown tall and graceful with young manhood, looked on the lad with favor and she was diverted with what Wang Lung said to her and she replied, musing,

“There was a man who used to come in to me at the great tea house, and he often spoke of his daughter, because he said she was such an one as I, small and fine, but still only a child, and he said, ‘And I love you with a strange unease as though you were my daughter; you are too like her, and it troubles me for it is not lawful,’ and for this reason, although he loved me best, he went to a great red girl called Pomegranate Flower.”

“What sort of man was this?” asked Wang Lung.

“He was a good man and his silver was ready and he did not promise without paying. We all wished him well, for he was not begrudging, and if a girl was weary sometimes he did not bawl out as some did that he had been cheated, but he always said courteously as a prince might, or some might from a learned and noble house, ‘Well, and here is the silver, and rest, my child, until love blooms again.’ He spoke very prettily to us.” And Lotus mused until Wang Lung said hastily to waken her, for he did not like her to think on her old life,

“What was his business, then, with all this silver?”

And she answered,

“Now and I do not know but I think he was master of a grain market, but I will ask Cuckoo who knows everything about men and their money.”

Then she clapped her hands and Cuckoo ran in from the kitchen, her high cheeks and nose flushed with the fire, and Lotus asked her,

“Who was that great, large, goodly man who came to me and then to Pomegranate Flower, because I was like his little daughter, so that it troubled him, although he ever loved me best?”

And Cuckoo answered at once, “Ah, and that was Liu, the grain dealer. Ah, he was a good man! He left silver in my palm whenever he saw me.”

“Where is his market?” asked Wang Lung, although idly, because it was woman’s talk and likely to come to nothing.

“In the street of the Stone Bridge,” said Cuckoo.

Then before she finished the words Wang Lung struck his hands together in delight and he said,

“Now then, that is where I sell my grain, and it is a propitious thing and surely it can be done,” and for the first time his interest was awake, because it seemed to him a lucky thing to wed his son to the daughter of the man who bought his grain.