Good Earth, The - Pearl S. Buck [137]
But she said,
"Young men are not kind---they are only fierce."
And hearing her small childish voice quavering up from about his feet his heart welled up in a great wave of love for this maid, and he took her and raised her gently, and then led her into his own courts.
When it was done, this love of his age astonished him more than any of his lusts before, for with all his love for Pear Blossom he did not seize upon her as he had seized upon the others whom he had known.
No, he held her gently and he was satisfied to feel her light youth against his heavy old flesh, and he was satisfied merely with the sight of her in the day and with the touch of her fluttering coat against his hand and with the quiet resting of her body near him in the night. And he wondered at the love of old age, which is so fond and so easily satisfied.
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