Good Earth, The - Pearl S. Buck [24]
"Ah, it is something you do not know---to have an evil destiny! Where the fields of others bear good rice and wheat, ours bear weeds; where the houses of others stand for a hundred years, the earth itself shakes under ours so that the walls crack; where others bear men, I, although I conceive a son, will yet give birth to a girl---ah, evil destiny!"
She shrieked aloud and the neighbor women rushed out of their houses to see and to hear. Wang Lung stood stoutly, however, and would finish what he came to say.
"Nevertheless," he said, "although it is not for me to presume to advise the brother of my father, I will say this: it is better that a girl be married away while she is yet virgin, and whoever heard of a bitch dog who was allowed on the streets who did not give birth to a litter?"
Having spoken thus plainly, he went away to his own house and left his uncle's wife screaming. He had it in his mind to buy more land this year from the House of Hwang and more land year after year as he was able, and he dreamed of adding a new room to his house and it angered him that as he saw himself and his sons rising into a landed family, this shiftless brood of his cousins should be running loose, bearing the same name as his own.
The next day his uncle came to the field where he was working. O-lan was not there, for ten moons had passed since the second child was born and a third birth was close upon her, and this time she was not so well and for a handful of days she had not come to the fields and so Wang Lung worked alone. His uncle came slouching along a furrow, his clothes never oroperly buttoned about him, but caught together and held insecurely with his girdle, so that it always seemed that if a gust of wind blew at him he might suddenly stand naked. He came to where Wang Lung was and he stood in silence while Wang Lung hoed a narrow line beside the broad beans he was cultivating. At last Wang Lung said maliciously and without looking up,
"I ask your pardon, my uncle, for not stopping in my work. These beans, must, if they are to bear, as you know, be cultivated twice and thrice. Yours, doubtless, are finished. I am very slow---a poor farmer---never finishing my work in time to rest."
His uncle understood perfectly Wang Lung's malice, but he answered smoothly,
"I am a man of evil destiny. This year out of twenty seed beans, one came up, and in such a poor growth as that there is no use in putting the hoe down. We shall have to buy beans this year if we eat them," and he sighed heavily.
Wang Lung hardened his heart. He knew that his uncle had come to ask something of him. He put his hoe down into the ground with a long even movement and with great care, breaking up the tiniest clod in the soft earth already well cultivated. The bean plants stood erect in thrifty order, casting as they stood little fringes of clear shadow in the sunshine. At last his uncle began to speak.
"The person in my house has told me," he said, "of your interest in my worthless oldest slave creature. It is wholly true what you say. You are wise for your years. She should be married. She is fifteen years old and for these three or four years could have given birth. I am terrified constantly lest she conceive by some wild dog and bring shame to me and to our name. Think of this happening in our respectable family, to me, the brother of your own father!"
Wang Lung put his hoe down hard into the soil. He would have liked to have spoken plainly. He would have liked to have said,
"Why do you not control her, then? Why do you not keep her decently in the house and make her sweep and clean and cook; and make clothes for the family?"
But one cannot say these things to an older generation. He remained silent, therefore, and hoed closely about a small plant and he waited.
"If it had been my good destiny," continued his uncle mournfully, "to have married a wife as your father did, one who could work and at the same time produce sons, as your own does also, instead of