The Good Earth thoet-1

by Pearl Sydenstricker Buck

  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,

  “Well, and the thing is told, and she was angry enough until I reminded her she wanted and has wanted this long time the foreign clock you promised her, and she will have a ruby ring for her hand and a pair so that there will be one on each hand, and she will have other things as she thinks of them and a slave to take Pear Blossom’s place, and Pear Blossom is not to come to her any more, and you are not to come soon either, because the sight of you sickens her.”

  And Wang Lung promised eagerly and he said,

  “Get her what she wills and I do not begrudge anything.”

  And he was pleased that he need not see Lotus soon and until anger was cooled with the fulfillment of her wishes.

  There were left yet his three sons, and he was strangely ashamed before them of what he had done. And he said to himself again and again,

  “Am I not master in my own house and may I not take my own slave I bought with my silver?”

  But he was ashamed, and yet half proud too, as one feels himself who is still lusty and a man when others hold him to be only grandfather. And he waited for his sons to come into his court.

  They came one by one, separately, and the second one came first. Now this one when he came talked of the land and of the harvest and of the summer drought which would this year divide the harvest by three. But Wang Lung considered nothing in these days of rain or drought, for if the harvest of the year brought him in little there was silver left from the year before and he kept his courts stuffed with silver and there was money owing to him at the grain markets and he had much money let out at high interest that his second son collected for him, and he looked no more to see how the skies were over his land.

  But the second son talked on thus, and as he talked he looked here and there about the rooms with his eyes veiled and secret and Wang Lung knew that he looked for the maid to see if what he had heard was true, and so he called Pear Blossom from where she hid in the bedroom, and he called out,

  “Bring me tea, my child, and tea for my son!”

  And she came out, and her delicate pale face was rosy as a peach and she hung her head and crept about on her little silent feet, and the second son stared at her as if he had heard but could not believe until now.

  But he said nothing at all except that the land was thus and so and this tenant and that must be changed at the end of the year, and the other one, because he smoked opium and would not gather from the land what it could bear. And Wang Lung asked his son how his children did, and he answered they had the hundred days’ cough, but it was a slight thing now that the weather was warm.

  This they talked back and forth drinking tea, and the second son took his fill of what he saw and he went away, and Wang Lung was eased of his second son.

  Then the eldest son came in before the same day was half over and he came in tall and handsome and proud with the years of his maturity, and Wang Lung was afraid of his pride, and he did not call out Pear Blossom at first, but he waited and smoked his pipe. The eldest son sat there then stiff with his pride and his dignity and he asked after the proper manner for his father’s health and for his welfare. Then Wang Lung answered quickly and quietly that he was well, and as he looked at his son his fear went out of him.

  For he saw his eldest for what he was: a man big in body but afraid of his own town wife and more afraid of not appearing nobly born than of anything. And the robustness of the land that was strong in Wang Lung even when he did not know it swelled up in him, and he was careless again of this eldest son as he had been before, and careless of his proper looks, and he called easily of a sudden to Pear Blossom,

  “Come, my child, and pour out tea again for another son of mine!”

  This time she came out very cold and still and her small oval face was white as the flower of her name. Her eyes dropped as she came in and she moved stilly and did only what she was told to do and she went quickly out again.

  Now the two men had sat silent while she poured the tea, but when she was gone and they lifted their bowls, Wang Lung looked fully into his son’s eyes, and he caught there a naked look of admiration, and it was the look of one man who envies another man secretly. Then they drank their tea and the son said at last in a thick, uneven voice,

  “I did not believe it was so.”

  “Why not?” replied Wang Lung tranquilly. “It is my own house.”

  The son sighed then and after a time he answered,

  “You are rich and you may do as you like.” And he sighed again and he said, “Well, I suppose one is not always enough for any man and there comes a day—”

  He broke off, but there was in his look the tinge of a man who envies another man against his will, and Wang Lung looked and laughed in himself, for well he knew his eldest son’s lusty nature and that not forever would the proper town wife he had hold the leash and some day the man would come forth again.

  Then the eldest son said no more but he went his way as a man does who has had a new thought put into his head. And Wang sat and smoked his pipe and he was proud of himself that when he was an old man he had done what he wished.

  But it was night before the youngest son came in and he came alone also. Now. Wang Lung sat in his middle room on the court and the red candles were lit on the table and he sat there smoking, and Pear Blossom sat silently on the other side of the table from him, and her hands were folded and quiet in her lap. Sometimes she looked at Wang Lung, fully and without coquetry as a child does, and he watched her and was proud of what he had done.

  Then suddenly there was his youngest son standing before him, sprung out of the darkness of the court, and no one had seen him enter. But he stood there in some strange crouching way, and without taking thought of it, Wang Lung was reminded in a flash of memory of a panther he had once seen the men of the village bring in from the hills where they had caught it, and the beast was tied but he crouched for a spring, and his eyes gleamed, and the lad’s eyes gleamed and he fixed them upon his father’s face. And those brows of his that were too heavy and too black for his youth, he gathered fierce and black above his eyes. Thus he stood and at last he said in a low and surcharged voice,

  “Now I will go for a soldier—I will go for a soldier—”

  But he did not look at the girl, only at his father, and Wang Lung, who had not been afraid at all of his eldest son and his second son, was suddenly afraid of this one, whom he had scarcely considered from his birth up.

  And Wang Lung stammered and muttered, and would have spoken, but when he took his pipe from his
mouth, no sound came, and he stared at his son. And his son repeated again and again,

  “Now I will go—now I will go—”

  Suddenly he turned and looked at the girl once, and she looked back at him, shrinking, and she took her two hands and put them over her face so that she could not see him. Then the young man tore his eyes from her and he went in a leap from the room and Wang Lung looked out into the square of the darkness of the door, open into the black summer night, and he was gone and there was silence everywhere.

  At last he turned to the girl and he said humbly and gently and with a great sadness and all his pride gone.

  “I am too old for you, my heart, and well I know it I am an old, old man.”

  But the girl dropped her hands from her face and she cried more passionately than he had ever heard her cry,

  “Young men are so cruel—I like old men best!”

  When the morning came of the next day Wang Lung’s youngest son was gone and where he was gone no one knew.

  34

  Then as autumn flares with the false heat of summer before it dies into the winter, so with the quick love Wang Lung had for Pear Blossom. The brief heat of it passed and passion died out of him; he was fond of her, but passionless.

  With the passing of the flame out of him he was suddenly cold with an age and he was an old man. Nevertheless, he was fond of her, and it was a comfort to him that she was in his court and she served him faithfully and with a patience beyond her years, and he was always kind to her with a perfect kindness, and more and more his love for her was the love of father for daughter.

  And for his sake she was even kind to his poor fool and this was comfort to him, so that one day he told her what had long been in his mind. Now Wang Lung had thought many times of what would come to his poor fool when he was dead and there was not another one except himself who cared whether she lived or starved, and so he had bought a little bundle of white poisonous stuff at the medicine shop, and he had said to himself that he would give it to his fool to eat when he saw his own death was near. But still he dreaded this more than the hour of his own death, and it was a comfort to him now when he saw Pear Blossom was faithful.

  So he called her to him one day and he said,

  “There is none other but you to whom I can leave this poor fool of mine when I am gone, and she will live on and on after me, seeing that her mind has no troubles of its own, and she has nothing to kill her and no trouble to worry her. And well I know that no one will trouble when I am gone to feed her or to bring her out of the rain and the cold of winter or to set her in the summer sun, and she will be sent out to wander on the street, perhaps—this poor thing who has had care all her life from her mother and from me. Now here is a gate of safety for her in this packet, and when I die, after I am dead, you are to mix it in her rice and let her eat it, that she may follow me where I am. And so shall I be at ease.”

  But Pear Blossom shrank from the thing he held in his hand and she said in her soft way,

  “I can scarcely kill an insect and how could I take this life? No, my lord, but I will take this poor fool for mine because you have been kind to me—kinder than any in all my life, and the only kind one.”

  And Wang Lung could have wept for what she said because not one had ever requited him like this, and his heart clung to her and he said,

  “Nevertheless, take it, my child, for there is none I trust as I do you, but even you must die one day—although I cannot say the words—and after you there is none—no, not one—and well I know my sons’ wives are too busy with their children and their quarrels and my sons are men and cannot think of such things.”

  So when she saw his meaning, Pear Blossom took the packet from him and said no more and Wang Lung trusted her and was comforted for the fate of his poor fool.

  Then Wang Lung withdrew more and more into his age and he lived much alone except for these two in his courts, his poor fool and Pear Blossom. Sometimes he roused himself a little and he looked at Pear Blossom and he was troubled and said,

  “It is too quiet a life for you, my child.”

  But she always answered gently and in great gratitude,

  “It is quiet and safe.”

  And sometimes he said again,

  “I am too old for you, and my fires are ashes.”

  But she always answered with a great thankfulness,

  “You are kind to me and more I do not desire of any man.”

  Once when she said this Wang Lung was curious and he asked her,

  “What was it in your tender years that made you thus fearful of men?”

  And looking at her for answer he saw a great terror in her eyes and she covered them with her hands and she whispered,

  “Every man I hate except you—I have hated every man, even my father who sold me. I have heard only evil of them and I hate them all.”

  And he said wondering,

  “Now I should have said you had lived quietly and easily in my courts.”

  “I am filled with loathing,*” she said, looking away, “I am filled with loathing and I hate them all. I hate all young men.”

  And she would say nothing more, and he mused on it, and he did not know whether Lotus had filled her with tales of her life and had threatened her, or whether Cuckoo had frightened her with lewdness, or whether something had befallen her secretly that she would not tell him, or what it was.

  But he sighed and gave over his questions, because above everything now he would have peace, and he wished only to sit in his court near these two.

  So Wang Lung sat, and so his age came on him day by day and year by year, and he slept fitfully in the sun as his father had done, and he said to himself that his life was done and he was satisfied with it.

  Sometimes, but seldom, he went into the other courts and sometimes, but more seldom, he saw Lotus, and she never mentioned the maid he had taken, but she greeted him well enough and she was old too and satisfied with the food and the wine she loved and with the silver she had for the asking. She and Cuckoo sat together now after these many years as friends and no longer as mistress and servant, and they talked of this and that, and most of all the old days with men and they whispered together of things they would not speak aloud, and they ate and drank and slept, and woke to gossip again before eating and drinking.

  And when Wang Lung went, and it was very seldom, into his sons’ courts, they treated him courteously and they ran to get tea for him and he asked to see the last child and he asked many times, for he forgot easily,

  “How many grandchildren have I now?”

  And one answered him readily,

  “Eleven sons and eight daughters have your sons together.”

  And he, chuckling and laughing, said back,

  “Add two each year, and I know the number, is it so?”

  Then he would sit a little while and look at the children gathering around him to stare. His grandsons were tall lads now, and he looked at them, peering at them to see what they were, and he muttered to himself,

  “Now that one has the look of his great-grandfather and there is a small merchant Liu, and here is myself when young.”

  And he asked them,

  “Do you go to school?”

  “Yes, grandfather,” they answered in a scattered chorus, and he said again,

  “Do you study the Four Books?”

  Then they laughed with clear young scorn at a man so old as this and they said,

  “No, grandfather, and no one studies the Four Books since the Revolution.”

  And he answered, musing,

  “Ah, I have heard of a Revolution, but I have been too busy in my life to attend to it. There was always the land.”

  But the lads snickered at this, and at last Wang Lung rose, feeling himself after all but a guest in his sons’ courts.

  Then after a time he went no more to see his sons, but sometimes he would ask Cuckoo,

  “And are my two daughters-in-law at peace after all these years?”
/>
  And Cuckoo spat upon the ground and she said,

  “Those? They are at peace like two cats eyeing each other. But the eldest son wearies of his wife’s complaints of this and that—too proper a woman for a man, she is, and always talking of what they did in the house of her father, and she wearies a man. There is talk of his taking another. He goes often to the tea shops.”

  “Ah?” said Wang Lung.

  But when he would have thought of it his interest in the matter waned and before he knew it he was thinking of his tea and that the young spring wind smote cold upon his shoulders.

  And another time he said to Cuckoo,

  “Does any ever hear from that youngest son of mine where he is gone this long time?”

  And Cuckoo answered, for there was nothing she did not know in these courts,

  “Well, and he does not write a letter, but now and then one comes from the south and it is said he is a military official and great enough in a thing they call a Revolution there, but what it is I do not know—perhaps some sort of business.”

  And again Wang Lung said, “Ah?”

  And he would have thought of ft, but the evening was falling and his bones ached in the air left raw and chill when the sun withdrew. For his mind now went where it would and he could not hold it long to any one thing. And the needs of his old body for food and for hot tea were more keen than for anything. But at night when he was cold, Pear Blossom lay warm and young against him and he was comforted in his age with her warmth in his bed.

  Thus spring wore on again and again and vaguely and more vaguely as these years passed he felt it coming. But still one thing remained to him and it was his love for his land. He had gone away from it and he had set up his house in a town and he was rich. But his roots were in his land and although he forgot it for many months together, when spring came each year he must go out on to the land; and now although he could no longer hold a plow or do anything but see another drive the plow through the earth, still he must needs go and he went. Sometimes he took a servant and his bed and he slept again in the old earthen house and in the old bed where he had begotten children and where O-lan had died. When he woke in the dawn he went out and with his trembling hands he reached and plucked a bit of budding willow and a spray of peach bloom and held them all day in his hand.