Good Earth, The - Pearl S. Buck [131]
"Now there is only one thing to do, he must be given a slave for his pleasure while he is here, or else he will be taking where he should not"
And Wang Lung seized eagerly on what she said because it seemed to him he could not endure his life any more with all the trouble there was in his house, and so he said,
"It is a good thought"
And he bade Cuckoo go and ask the cousin what slave he would have since he had seen them all.
So Cuckoo did, then, and she came back and she said,
"He says he will have the little pale one who sleeps on the bed of the mistress."
Now this pale slave was called Pear Blossom and the one Wang Lung had bought in a famine year when she was small and piteous and half-starved, and because she was delicate always they had petted her and allowed her only to help Cuckoo and to do the lesser things about Lotus, filling her pipe and pouring her tea, and it was thus the cousin had seen her.
Now when Pear Blossom heard this she cried out as she poured the tea for Lotus, for Cuckoo said it all out before them in the inner court where they sat, and she dropped the pot and it broke into pieces on the tiles and the tea all streamed out, but the maid did not see what she had done. She only threw herself down before Lotus and she knocked her head on the tiles and she moaned forth,
"Oh, my mistress, not I---not I---I am afraid of him for my life---"
And Lotus was displeased with her and she answered pettishly,
"Now he is only a man and a man is no more than a man with a maid and they are all alike, and what is this ado?" And she turned to Cuckoo and said, "Take this slave and give her to him."
Then the young maid put her hands together piteously and cried as though she would die of weeping and fear and her little body was all trembling with her fear, and she looked from this face to that, beseeching with her weeping.
Now the sons of Wang Lung could not speak against their father's wife, nor could their wives speak if they did not, nor could the youngest son, but he stood there staring at her, his hands clenched on his bosom and his brows drawn down over his eyes, straight and black. But he did not speak. The children and the slaves looked and were silent, and there was only the sound of this dreadful, frightened weeping of the young girl.
But Wang Lung was made uncomfortable by it, and he looked at the young girl doubtfully, not caring to anger Lotus, but still moved, because he had always a soft heart. Then the maid saw his heart in his face and she ran and held his feet with her hands and she bent her head down to his feet and wept on in great sobs. And he looked down at her and saw how small her shoulders were and how they shook and he remembered the great, coarse, wild body of his cousin, now long past his youth, and a distaste for the thing seized him and he said to Cuckoo, his voice mild,
"Well now, it is ill to force the young maid like this."
These words be said mildly enough, but Lotus cried out sharply,
"She is to do as she is told, and I say it is foolish, all this weeping over a small thing that must happen soon or late with all women."
But Wang Lung was indulgent and he said to Lotus,
"Let us see first what else can be done, and let me buy for you another slave if you will, or what you will, but let me see what can be done."
Then Lotus, who had long been minded for a foreign clock and a new ruby ring, was suddenly silent and Wang Lung said to Cuckoo,
"Go and tell my cousin the girl has a vile and incurable disease, but if he will have her with that, then well enough and she shall come to him, but if he fears it as we all do, then tell him we have another and a sound one."
And he cast his eyes over the slaves who stood about and they turned away their faces and giggled and made as if they were ashamed, all except one stout wench, who was already twenty or so, and she said with her face