Good Earth, The - Pearl S. Buck [89]
"What was his business, then, with all this silver?"
And she answered,
"Now and I do not know but I think he was master of a grain market, but I will ask Cuckoo who knows everything about men and their money."
Then she clapped her hands and Cuckoo ran in from the kitchen, her high cheeks and nose flushed with the fire, and Lotus asked her,
"Who was that great, large, goodly man who came to me and then to Pomegranate Flower, because I was like his little daughter, so that it troubled him, although he ever loved me best?"
And Cuckoo answered at once, "Ah, and that was Liu, the grain dealer. Ah, he was a good man! He left silver in my palm whenever he saw me."
"Where is his market?" asked Wang Lung, although idly, because it was woman's talk and likely to come to nothing.
"In the street of the Stone Bridge," said Cuckoo.
Then before she finished the words Wang Lung struck his hands together in delight and he said,
"Now then, that is where I sell my grain, and it is a propitious thing and surely it can be done," and for the first time his interest was awake, because it seemed to him a lucky thing to wed his son to the daughter of the man who bought his grain.
When there was a thing to be done, Cuckoo smelled the money in it as a rat smells tallow, and she wiped her hands upon her apron and she said quickly,
"I am ready to serve the master."
Wang Lung was doubtful, and doubting, he looked at her crafty face, but Lotus said gaily,
"And that is true, and Cuckoo shall go and ask the man Liu, and he knows her well and the thing can be done, for Cuckoo is clever enough, and she shall have the matchmaker's fee, if it is well done."
"That will I do!" said Cuckoo heartily and she laughed as she thought of the fee of good silver on her palm, and she untied her apron from her waist and she said busily, "Now and at once will I go, for the meat is ready except for the moment of cooking and the vegetables are washed."
But Wang Lung had not pondered the matter sufficiently and it was not to be decided so quickly as this and he called out,
"No, and I have decided nothing. I must think of the matter for some days and I will tell you what I think."
The women were impatient, Cuckoo for the silver and Lotus because it was a new thing and she would hear something new to amuse her, but Wang Lung went out, saying,
"No, it is my son and I will wait."
And so he might have waited for many days, thinking of this and that, had not one early morning, the lad, his eldest son, come home in the dawn with his face hot and red with wine drinking, and his breath was fetid and his feet unsteady. Wang Lung heard him stumbling in the court and he ran out to see who it was, and the lad was sick and vomited before him, for he was unaccustomed to more than the pale mild wine they made from their own rice fermented, and he fell and lay on the ground in his vomit like a dog.
Wang Lung was frightened and he called for O-lan, and together they lifted the lad up and O-lan washed him and laid him upon the bed in her own room, and before she was finished with him the lad was asleep and heavy as one dead and could answer nothing to what his father asked.
Then Wang Lung went into the room where the two boys slept together, and the younger was yawning and stretching and tying his books into a square cloth to carry to school, and Wang Lung said to him,
"Was your elder brother not in the bed with you last night?"
And the boy answered unwillingly,
"No."
There was some fear in his look and Wang Lung, seeing it, cried out at him roughly,
"Where was he gone?" and when the boy would not answer, he took him by the neck and shook him and cried, "Now tell me all, you small dog!"
The boy was frightened