Good Earth, The - Pearl S. Buck [112]
Her cousin laid hold of her one night when she passed alone through the court from the kitchen. He laid hold of her roughly and he pressed his hand into her bosom and she screamed out, and Wang Lung ran out and beat the man about the head, but he was like a dog with a piece of stolen meat that he would not drop, so that Wang Lung had to tear his daughter away. Then the man laughed thickly and he said,
"It is only play and is she not my sister? Can a man do any evil with his sister?" But his eyes glittered with lust as he spoke and Wang Lung muttered and pulled the girl away and sent her into her own room.
And Wang Lung told his son that night what had come about, and the young man was grave and he said,
"We must send the maid into the town to the home of her betrothed; even if the merchant Liu says it is a year too evil for wedding we must send her, lest we cannot keep her virgin with this hot tiger in the house."
So Wang Lung did. He went the next day into the town and to the house of the merchant and he said,
"My daughter is thirteen years old and no longer a child and she is fit for marriage."
But Liu was hesitant and he said,
"I have not enough profit this year to begin a family in my house."
Now Wang Lung was ashamed to say, "There is the son of my uncle in the house and he is a tiger," so he said only,
"I would not have the care of this maid upon me, because her mother is dead and she is pretty and is of an age to conceive, and my house is large and full of this and that, and I cannot watch her every hour. Since she is to be your family, let her virginity be guarded here, and let her be wed soon or late as you like."
Then the merchant, being a lenient and kindly man, replied,
"Well, and if this is how it is, let the maid come and I will speak to my son's mother, and she can come and be safe here in the courts with her mother-in-law, and after the next harvest or so, she can be wed."
Thus the matter was settled and Wang Lung was well content, and he went away.
But on his way back to the gate in the wall, where Ching held a boat waiting for him, Wang Lung passed a shop where tobacco and opium are sold, and he went in to buy himself a little shredded tobacco to put in bis water pipe in the evenings, and as the clerk had it on the scales, he said half unwillingly to the man,
"And how much is your opium if you have it?"
And the clerk said,
"It is not lawful in these days to sell it over the counter, and we do not sell it so, but if you wish to buy it and have the silver, it is weighed out in the room behind this, an ounce for a silver piece."
Then Wang Lung would not think further what he did, but he said quickly,
"I will take six ounces of it."
Chapter 28
THEN AFTER the second daughter was sent away and Wang Lung was free of his anxiety about her, he said to his uncle one day,
"Since you are my father's brother, here is a little better tobacco for you."
And he opened the jar of opium and the stuff was sticky and sweet smelling and Wang Lung's uncle took it and smelled of it, and he laughed and was pleased and he said,
"Well now, I have smoked it a little but not often before this, for it is too dear, but I like it well enough."
And Wang Lung answered him, pretending to be careless,
"It is only a little I bought once for my father when he grew old and could not sleep at night and I found it today unused and I thought, 'There is my father's brother, and why should he not have it before me, who am younger and do not need it yet?' Take it then, and smoke it when you wish or when you have a little pain."
Then Wang Lung's uncle took it greedily, for it was sweet to smell and a thing that only rich men used, and he took it and bought a pipe and he smoked the opium, lying all day upon his bed to do it. Then Wang Lung saw to it that there were pipes bought and left here and there and he pretended to smoke himself, but he only took a pipe to his room and left it there cold. And his two sons in the house and Lotus he would not allow to touch the opium, saying as his excuse that it was too dear, but