The Good Earth (35 page)

And when the birth feast was over Wang Lung’s son came to his father and he said,

“Now that there are the three generations in this house, we should have the tablets of ancestors that great families have, and we should set the tablets up to be worshipped at the feast days for we are an established family now.”

This pleased Wang Lung greatly, and so he ordered it and so it was carried out, and there in the great hall the row of tablets was set up, his grandfather’s name on one and then his father’s, and the spaces left empty for Wang Lung’s name and his son’s when they should die. And Wang Lung’s son bought an incense urn and set it before the tablets.

When this was finished Wang Lung remembered the red robe he had promised the goddess of mercy and so he went to the temple to give the money for it.

And then, on his way back, as if the gods cannot bear to give freely and not hide sting somewhere in the gift one came running from the harvest fields to tell him that Ching lay dying suddenly and had asked if Wang Lung would come to see him die. Wang Lung hearing the panting runner, cried angrily,

“Now I suppose that accursed pair in the temple are jealous because I gave a red robe to a town goddess and I suppose they do not know they have no power over childbirth and only over land.”

And although his noon meal stood ready for him to eat he would not take up his chopsticks, although Lotus called loudly to him to wait until after the evening sun came; he would not stay for her, and he went out. Then when Lotus saw he did not heed her she sent a slave after him with an umbrella of oiled paper, but so fast did Wang Lung run that the stout maid had difficulty in holding the umbrella over his head.

Wang Lung went at once to the room where Ching had been laid and he called out loudly to anyone,

“Now how did all this come about?”

The room was full of laborers crowding about and they answered in confusion and haste,

“He would work himself at the threshing …” “We told him not at his age …” “There was a laborer who is newly hired …” “He could not hold the flail rightly and Ching would show him …” “It is labor too hard for an old man …”

Then Wang Lung called out in a terrible voice,

“Bring me this laborer!”

And they pushed the man in front before Wang Lung, and he stood there trembling and his bare knees knocking together, a great, ruddy, coarse, country lad, with his teeth sticking out in a shelf over his lower lip and round dull eyes like an ox’s eyes. But Wang Lung had no pity on him. He slapped the lad on both his cheeks and he took the umbrella from the slave’s hand and he beat the lad about the head, and none dared stop him lest his anger go into his blood and at his age poison him. And the bumpkin stood it humbly, blubbering a little and sucking his teeth.

Then Ching moaned from the bed where he lay and Wang Lung threw down the umbrella and he cried out,

“Now this one will die while I am beating a fool!”

And he sat down beside Ching and took his hand and held it, and it was as light and dry and small as a withered oak leaf and it was not possible to believe that any blood ran through it, so dry and light and hot it was. But Ching’s face, which was pale and yellow every day, was now dark and spotted with his scanty blood, and his half-opened eyes were filmed and blind and his breath came in gusts. Wang Lung leaned down to him and said loudly in his ear,

“Here am I and I will buy you a coffin second to my father’s only!”

But Ching’s ear were filled with his blood, and if he heard Wang Lung he made no sign, but he only lay there panting and dying and so he died.

When he was dead Wang Lung leaned over him and he wept as he had not wept when his own father died, and he ordered a coffin of the best kind, and he hired priests for the funeral and he walked behind wearing white mourning. He made his eldest son, even, wear white bands on his ankles as though a relative had died, although his son complained and said,

“He was only an upper servant, and it is not suitable so to mourn for a servant.”

But Wang Lung compelled him for three days. And if Wang Lung had had his way wholly, he would have buried Ching inside the earthen wall where his father and O-lan were buried. But his sons would not have it and they complained and said,

“Shall our mother and grandfather lie with a servant? And must we also in our time?”

Then Wang Lung, because he could not contend with them and because at his age he would have peace in his house, buried Ching at the entrance to the wall and he was comforted with what he had done, and he said,

“Well, and it is meet, for he has ever stood guardian to me against evil.” And he directed his sons that when he himself died he should lie nearest to Ching.

Then less than ever did Wang Lung go to see his lands, because now Ching was gone it stabbed him to go alone and he was weary of labor and his bones ached when he walked over the rough fields alone. So he rented out all his land that he could and men took it eagerly, for it was known to be good land. But Wang Lung would never talk of selling a foot of any piece, and he would only rent it for an agreed price for a year at a time. Thus he felt it all his own and still in his hand.

And he appointed one of the laborers and his wife and children to live in the country house and to care for the two old opium dreamers. Then seeing his youngest son’s wistful eyes, he said,

“Well, and you may come with me into the town, and I will take my fool with me too, and she can live in my court where I am. It is too lonely for you now that Ching is gone, and with him gone, I am not sure that they will be kind to the poor fool seeing there will be none to tell if she is beaten or ill fed. And there is no one now to teach you concerning the land, now that Ching is gone.”

So Wang Lung took his youngest son and his fool with him and thereafter he came scarcely at all for a long time to the house on his land.

N
OW TO WANG LUNG
it seemed there was nothing left to be desired in his condition, and now he could sit in his chair in the sun beside his fool and he could smoke his water pipe and be at peace since his land was tended and the money from it coming into his hand without care from him.

And so it might have been if it had not been for that eldest son of his who was never content with what was going on well enough but must be looking aside for more. So he came to his father saying,

“There is this and that which we need in this house and we must not think we can be a great family just because we live in these inner courts. Now there is my younger brother’s wedding due in a bare six months and we have not chairs enough to seat the guests and we have not bowls enough nor tables enough nor anything enough in these rooms. It is a shame, moreover, to ask guests to come through the great gates and through all that common swarm with their stinks and their noise, and with my brother wed and his children and mine to come we need those courts also.”

Then Wang Lung looked at his son standing there in his handsome raiment and he shut his eyes and drew hard on his pipe and he growled forth,

“Well, and what now and what again?”

The young man saw his father was weary of him but he said stubbornly, and he made his voice a little louder,’

“I say we should have the outer courts also and we should have what befits a family with so much money as we have and good land as we have.”

Then Wang Lung muttered into his pipe,

“Well, and the land is mine and you have never put your hand to it.”

“Well, and my father,” the young man cried out at this, “it was you who would have me a scholar and when I try to be a fitting son to a man of land you scorn me and would make a hind of me and my wife.” And the young man turned himself away stormily and made as though he would knock his brains out against a twisted pine tree that stood there in the court.

Wang Lung was frightened at this, lest the young man do himself an injury, since he had been fiery always, and so he called out,

“Do as you like—do as you like—only do not trouble me with it!”

Hearing this, the son went away quickly lest his father change and he went well pleased. As quickly as he was able, then, he bought tables and chairs from Soochow, carved and wrought, and he bought curtains of red silk to hang in the doorways and he bought vases large and small and he bought scrolls to hang on the wall and as many as he could of beautiful women, and he bought curious rocks to make rockeries in the courts such as he had seen in southern parts, and thus he busied himself for many days.

With all this coming and going he had to pass many times through the outer courts, even every day, and he could not pass among the common people without sticking his nose up and he could not bear them, so that the people who lived there laughed at him after he had passed and they said,

“He has forgotten the smell of the manure in the dooryard on his father’s farm!”

But still none dared to speak thus as he passed, for he was a rich man’s son. When the feast came when rents are decided upon these common people found that the rent for the rooms and the courts where they lived had been greatly raised, because another would pay that much for them, and they had to move away. Then they knew it was Wang Lung’s eldest son who had done this, although he was clever and said nothing and did it all by letters to the son of the old Lord Hwang in foreign parts, and this son of the Old Lord cared for nothing except where and how he could get the most money for the old house.

The common people had to move, then, and they moved complaining and cursing because a rich man could do as he would and they packed their tattered possessions, and went away swelling with anger and muttering that one day they would come back even as the poor do come back when the rich are too rich.

But all this Wang Lung did not hear, since he was in the inner courts and seldom came forth, since he slept and ate and took his ease as his age came on, and he left the thing in the hands of his eldest son. And his son called carpenters and clever masons and they repaired the rooms and the moon gates between the courts that the common people had ruined with their coarse ways of living, and he built again the pools and he bought flecked and golden fish to put in them. And after it was all finished and made beautiful as far as he knew beauty, he planted lotus and lilies in the pools, and the scarlet-berried bamboo of India and everything he could remember he had seen in southern parts. And his wife came out to see what he had done and the two of them walked about through every court and room and she saw this and that still lacking, and he listened with great heed to all she said that he might do it.

Then people on the streets of the town heard of all that Wang Lung’s eldest son did, and they talked of what was being done in the great house, now that a rich man lived there again. And people who had said Wang The Farmer now said Wang The Big Man or Wang The Rich Man.

The money for all these doings had gone out of Wang Lung’s hand bit by bit, so that he scarcely knew when it went, for the eldest son came and said,

“I need a hundred pieces of silver here”; or he said, “There is a good gate which needs only an odd bit of silver to mend it as good as new”; or he said, “There is a place where a long table should stand.”

And Wang Lung gave him the silver bit by bit, as he sat smoking and resting in his court, for the silver came in easily from the land at every harvest and whenever he needed it, and so he gave it easily. He would not have known how much he gave had not his second son come into his court one morning when the sun was scarcely over the wall and he said,

“My father, is there to be no end to all this pouring out of money and need we live in a palace? So much money lent out at twenty per cent would have brought in many pounds of silver, and what is the use of all these pools and flowering trees that bear no fruit even, and all these idle, blooming lilies?”

Wang Lung saw that these two brothers would quarrel over this yet, and he said hastily, lest he never have any peace,

“Well, and it is all in honor of your wedding.”

Then the young man answered, smiling crookedly and without any meaning of mirth,

“It is an odd thing for the wedding to cost ten times as much as the bride. Here is our inheritance, that should be divided between us when you are dead, being spent now for nothing but the pride of my elder brother.”

And Wang Lung knew the determination of this second son of his and he knew he would never have done with him if talk began, so he said hastily,

“Well—well—I will have an end to it—I will speak to your brother and I will shut my hand. It is enough. You are right!”

The young man had brought out a paper on which was written a list of all the moneys his brother had spent, and Wang Lung saw the length of the list and he said quickly,

“I have not eaten yet and at my age I am faint in the morning until I eat. Another time for this.” And he turned and went into his own room and so dismissed his second son.

But he spoke that same evening to his eldest son, saying,

“Have done with all this painting and polishing. It is enough. We are, after all, country folk.”

But the young man answered proudly,

“That we are not. Men in the town are beginning to call us the great family Wang. It is fitting that we live somewhat suitably to that name, and if my brother cannot see beyond the meaning of silver for its own sake, I and my wife, we will uphold the honor of the name.”

Now Wang Lung had not known that men so called his house, for as he grew older he went seldom even to the tea shops and no more to the grain markets since there was his second son to do his business there for him, but it pleased him secretly and so he said,

“Well, even great families are from the land and rooted in the land.”

But the young man answered smartly,

“Yes, but they do not stay there. They branch forth and bear flowers and fruits.”

Wang Lung would not have his son answering him too easily and quickly like this, so he said,

“I have said what I have said. Have done with pouring out silver. And roots, if they are to bear fruits, must be kept well in the soil of the land.”