Good Earth, The - Pearl S. Buck [7]
Down a long narrow veranda they went, the roofs supported by delicate carven posts, and into a hall the like of which Wang Lung had never seen. A score of houses such as his whole house could have been put into it and have disappeared, so wide were the spaces, so high the roofs. Lifting his head in wonder to see the great carven and painted beams above him he stumbled upon the high threshold of the door and would have fallen except that the gateman caught his arm and cried out,
"Now will you be so polite as to fall on your face like this before the Old Mistress?"
And collecting himself in great shame Wang Lung looked ahead of him, and upon a dais in the center of the room he saw a very old lady, her small fine body clothed in lustrous, pearly grey satin, and upon the low bench beside her a pipe of opium stood, burning over its little lamp. She looked at him out of small, sharp, black eyes, as sunken and sharp as a monkey's eyes in her thin and wrinkled face. The skin of her hand that held the pipe's end was stretched over her little bones as smooth and as yellow as the gilt upon an idol. Wang Lung fell to his knees and knocked his head on the tiled floor.
"Raise him," said the old lady gravely to the gateman, "these obeisances are not necessary. Has he come for the woman?"
"Yes, Ancient One," replied the gateman.
"Why does he not speak for himself?" asked the old lady.
"Because he is a fool, Ancient One," said the gateman, twirling the hairs of his mole.
This roused Wang Lung and he looked with indignation at the gateman.
"I am only a coarse person, Great and Ancient Lady," he said. "I do not know what words to use in such a presence."
The old lady looked at him carefully and with perfect gravity and made as though she would have spoken, except that her hand closed upon the pipe which a slave had been tending for her and at once she seemed to forget him. She bent and sucked greedily at the pipe for a moment and the sharpness passed from her eyes and a film of forgetfulness came over them. Wang Lung remained standing before her until in passing her eyes caught his figure.
"What is this man doing here?" she asked with sudden anger. It was as though she had forgotten everything. The gateman's face was immovable. He said nothing.
"I am waiting for the woman, Great Lady," said Wang Lung in much astonishment.
"The woman? What woman?..." the old lady began, but the slave girl at her side stooped and whispered and the lady recovered herself. "Ah, yes, I forgot for the moment---a small affair---you have come for the slave called O-lan. I remember we promised her to some farmer in marriage. You are that farmer?"
"I am he," replied Wang Lung.
"Call O-lan quickly," said the old lady to her slave. It was as though she was suddenly impatient to be done with all this and to be left alone in the stillness of the great room with her opium pipe.
And in an instant the slave appeared leading by the hand a square, rather tall figure, clothed in clean blue cotton coat and trousers. Wang Lung glanced once and then away, his heart beating. This was his woman.
"Come here, slave," said the old lady carelessly. "This man has come for you."
The woman went before the lady and stood with bowed head and hands clasped.
"Are you ready?" asked the lady.
The woman answered slowly as an echo, "Ready."
Wang Lung, hearing her voice for the first time, looked at her back as she stood before him. It was a good enough voice, not loud, not soft, plain, and not ill-tempered. The woman's hair was neat and smooth and her coat clean. He saw with an instant's disappointment that her feet were not bound. But this he could not dwell upon, for the old lady was saying to the gateman,
"Carry her box out to the gate and let them begone." And then she called Wang Lung and said, "Stand beside her while I speak." And when Wang had come forward she said to him, "This woman came into our house when she was a child of ten and here she has lived until now, when she is twenty years old. I bought her in a year of famine