Good Earth, The - Pearl S. Buck [62]
"But into whose hand would I put the money?" asked Wang Lung, still unbelieving.
"Into the Old Lord's hand, and whose else?" replied the woman smoothly. But Wang Lung knew that the Old Lord's hand opened into hers.
He would not, therefore, talk further with her, but turned away saying, "Another day---another day---" and he went to the gate and she followed him, shrieking after him into the street,
"This time tomorrow---this time or this afternoon---all times are alike!"
He went down the street without answer, greatly puzzled and needing to think over what he had heard. He went into the small tea shop and ordered tea of the slavey and when the boy had put it smartly before him and with an impudent gesture had caught and tossed the penny he paid for it, Wang Lung fell to musing. And the more he mused the more monstrous it seemed that the great and rich family, who all his own life and all his father's and grandfather's lives long had been a power and a glory in the town, were now fallen and scattered.
"It comes of their leaving the land," he thought regretfully, and he thought of his own two sons, who were growing like young bamboo shoots in the spring, and he resolved that on this very day he would make them cease playing in the sunshine and he would set them to tasks in the field, where they would early take into their bones and their blood the feel of the soil under their feet, and the feel of the hoe hard in their hands.
Well, but all this time here were these jewels hot and heavy against his body and he was continually afraid. It seemed as though their brilliance must shine through his rags and someone cry out,
"Now here is a poor man carrying an emperor's treasure!"
And he could not rest until they were changed into land. He watched, therefore, until the shopkeeper had a moment of idleness and he called to the man and said,
"Come and drink a bowl at my cost, and tell me the news of the town, since I have been a winter away."
The shopkeeper was always ready for such talk, especially if he drank his own tea at another's cost, and he sat down readily at Wang Lung's table, a small weasel-faced man with a twisted and crossed left eye. His clothes were solid and black with grease down the front of his coat and trousers, for besides tea he sold food also, which he cooked himself, and he was fond of saying, "There is a proverb, 'A good cook has never a clean coat,'&nsp;" and so he considered himself justly and necessarily filthy. He sat down and began at once,
"Well, and beyond the starving of people, which is no news, the greatest news was the robbery at the House of Hwang."
It was just what Wang Lung hoped to hear and the man went on to tell him of it with relish, describing how the few slaves left had screamed and how they had been carried off and how the concubines that remained had been raped and driven out and some even taken away, so that now none cared to live in that house at all. "None," the man finished, "except the Old Lord, who is now wholly the creature of a slave called Cuckoo, who has for many years been in the Old Lord's chamber, while others came and went, because of her cleverness."
"And has this woman command, then?" asked Wang Lung, listening closely.
"For the time she can do anything," replied the man. "And so for the time she closes her hand on everything that can be held and swallows all that can be swallowed. Some day, of course, when the young lords have their affairs settled in other parts they will come back and then she cannot fool them with her talk of a faithful servant to be rewarded, and out she will go. But she has her living made now, although she live to a hundred years."
"And the land?" asked Wang Lung at last, quivering with his eagerness.
"The land?" said the man blankly. To this shopkeeper land meant nothing at all.
"Is it for sale?" said Wang Lung impatiently.
"Oh, the land!" answered the man with indifference, and then as a customer came in he rose and called as he went, "I