Good Earth, The - Pearl S. Buck [70]
"Well, and Wang the farmer!" she said, lingering with malice on the word farmer, "and who would think to see you here!"
It seemed to Wang Lung then that he must prove at any cost to this woman that he was more than a mere country fellow, and he laughed and said too loudly,
"Is not my money as good to spend as another man's? And money I do not lack in these days. I have had good fortune."
Cuckoo stopped at this, her eyes narrow and bright as a snake's eyes, and her voice smooth as oil flowing from a vessel.
"And who has not heard it? And how shall a man better spend the money he has over and above his living than in a place like this, where rich men take their joy and elegant lords gather to take their joy in feasting and pleasure? There is no such wine as ours---have you tasted it, Wang Lung?"
"I have only drunk tea as yet," replied Wang Lung and he was half ashamed. "I have not touched wine or dice."
"Tea!" she exclaimed after him, laughing shrilly. "But we have tiger bone wine and dawn wine and wine of fragrant rice---why need you drink tea?" And as Wang Lung hung his head she said softly and insidiously,
"And I suppose you have not looked at anything else, have you, eh?---No pretty little hands, no sweet-smelling cheeks?"
Wang Lung hung his head yet lower and the red blood rushed into his face and he felt as though everyone near looked at him with mockery and listened to the voice of the woman. But when he took heart to glance about from under his lids, he saw no one paying any heed and the rattling of dice burst out anew and so he said in confusion,
"No---no---I have not---only tea---"
Then the woman laughed again and pointed to the painted silken scrolls and said,
"There they are, their pictures. Choose which one you wish to see and put the silver in my hand and I will place her before you."
"Those!" said Wang Lung, wondering. "I thought they were pictures of dream women, of goddesses in the mountain of Kwen Lwen, such as the story tellers speak of!"
"So they are dream women," rejoined Cuckoo, with mocking good humor, "but dreams such as a little silver will turn into flesh." And she went on her way, nodding and winking at the servants standing about and motioning to Wang Lung as at one of whom she said, "There is a country bumpkin!"
But Wang Lung sat staring at the pictures with a new interest. Up this narrow stairway then, in the rooms above him there were these women in flesh and blood, and men went up to them---other men than he, of course, but men! Well, and if he were not the man he was, a good and working man, a man with a wife and sons, which picture would he, pretending as a child pretends that he might do a certain thing, pretending then, which would he pretend to take? And he looked at every painted face closely and with intensity as though each were real. Before this they had all seemed equally beautiful, before this when there had been no question of choosing. But now there were clearly some more beautiful than others, and out of the score and more he chose three most beautiful, and out of the three he chose again and he chose one most beautiful, a small, slender thing, a body light as a bamboo and a little face as pointed as a kitten's face, and one hand clasping the stem of a lotus flower in bud, and the hand as delicate as the tendril of a fern uncurled.
He stared at her and as he stared a heat like wine poured through his veins.
"She is like a flower on a quince tree," he said suddenly aloud, and hearing his own voice he was alarmed and ashamed and he rose hastily and put down his money and went out and into the darkness that had now fallen and so to his home.
But over the fields and the water the moonlight hung, a net of silver mist, and in his body his blood ran secret and hot and fast.
Chapter 19
NOW IF THE WATERS had at this time receded from Wang Lung's land, leaving it wet and smoking under the sun, so that in a few days of summer heat it would need to have been ploughed and harrowed and seed