Good Earth, The - Pearl S. Buck [20]
"Ah, Wang the farmer, three this time instead of one!" And then seeing the new clothes they all wore and the child who was a son, he said further, "One has no need to wish you more fortune this year than you have had in the last."
Wang Lung answered negligently as one speaks to a man who is scarcely an equal, "Good harvests---good harvests---" and he stepped with assurance inside the gate.
The gateman was impressed with all he saw and he said to Wang Lung,
"Do you sit within my wretched room while I announce your woman and son within."
And Wang Lung stood watching them go across the court, his wife and his son, bearing gifts to the head of a great house. It was all to his honor, and when he could no longer see them when they had dwindled down the long vista of the courts one inside the other, and had turned at last wholly out of sight, he went into the gateman's house and there he accepted as a matter of course from the gateman's pock-marked wife the honorable seat to the left of the table in the middle room, and he accepted with only a slight nod the bowl of tea which she presented to him and he set it before him and did not drink of it, as though it were not good enough in quality of tea leaves for him.
It seemed a long time before the gateman returned, bringing back again the woman and child. Wang Lung looked closely at the woman's face for an instant trying to see if all were well, for he had learned now from that impassive square countenance to detect small changes at first invisible to him. She wore a look of heavy content, however, and at once he became impatient to hear her tell of what had happened in those courts of the ladies into which he could not go, now that he had no business there.
With short bows, therefore, to the gateman and to his pockmarked wife he hurried O-lan away and he took into his own arms the child who was asleep and lying all crumpled in his new coat.
"Well?" he called back to her over his shoulder as she followed him. For once he was impatient with her slowness. She drew a little nearer to him and said in a whisper,
"I believe, if one should ask me, that they are feeling a pinch this year in that house."
She spoke in a shocked tone as one might speak of gods being hungry.
"What do you mean?" said Wang Lung, urging her.
But she would not be hastened. Words were to her things to be caught one by one and released with difficulty.
"The Ancient Mistress wore the same coat this year as last. I have never seen this happen before. And the slaves had no new coats." And then after a pause she said, "I saw not one slave with a new coat like mine." And then after a while she said again, "As for our son, there was not even a child among the concubines of the Old Master himself to compare to him in beauty and in dress."
A slow smile spread over her face and Wang Lung laughed aloud and he held the child tenderly against him. How well he had done---how well he had done! And then as he exulted he was smitten with fear. What foolish thing was he doing, walking like this under an open sky, with a beautiful man child for any evil spirit passing by chance through the air to see! He opened his coat hastily and thrust the child's head into his bosom and he said in a loud voice,
"What a pity our child is a female whom no one could want and covered with smallpox as well! Let us pray it may die."
"Yes---yes---" said his wife as quickly as she could, understanding dimly what a thing they had done.
And being comforted with these precautions they had now taken, Wang Lung once more urged his wife.
"Did you find out why they are poorer?"
"I had but a moment for private talk with the cook under whom I worked before," she replied, "but she said, 'This house cannot stand forever with all the young lords, five of them, spending money like waste water in foreign parts and sending home woman after woman as they weary of them, and the Old Lord living at home adding