She saw him in his terror and she said quietly and aloud and in her natural voice,
“No, no, my lord — you are better, you are not dying!”
“You — are sure?” he whispered again, comforted with her natural voice, and he fixed his glazing eyes upon her face.
Then Pear Blossom, seeing what must come, felt her heart begin to beat hard and quick, and she rose and bent over him and she said in her same, soft, usual voice,
“Have I ever deceived you, my lord? See, your hand I hold feels so warm and strong — I think you are growing better every moment. You are so well, my lord! You need not be afraid — no, fear nothing — you are better — you are better—”
So she soothed him steadily on, saying over and over how well he was and holding his hand close and warm, and he lay smiling up at her, his eyes dimming and fixing, his lips stiffening, his ears straining to catch her steady voice. Then when she saw he was dying indeed, she leaned down close to him and she lifted her voice clear and high and she called,
“You are better — you are better! No death, my lord — it is not death!”
Thus she comforted him and even as he gathered his last heart beats together at the sound of her voice, he died. But he could not die peacefully. No, although he died comforted, yet when his soul tore itself out of him, his choked body gave a great leap as though of anger and his arms and legs flung themselves out and so strongly that his bony old hand jerked upward and struck Pear Blossom as she leaned over him. It struck her full in the face and with a blow so sharp she put her hand to her cheek and she murmured,
“The only blow you ever gave me, my lord!”
But he gave her no answer. Then she looked down and saw him lying all askew and as she looked his last breath went out of him in a gust and he was still. She straightened his old limbs then, touching him lightly and delicately, and she smoothed his quilts decently over him. With her tender fingers she closed his staring eyes that saw her no more, and she gazed for an instant at the smile, still on his face, which had come when she told him he was not dying.
When she finished all this, she knew she must go and call his sons. But she sat down upon the low stool again. Well she knew she must call his sons. But she took the hand that had struck her and she held it and bowed her head upon it and she wept a few silent tears while she was yet alone. But hers was a strange heart, sad in its very nature, and she could never weep and ease it as other women do, for her tears never brought her comfort.…She did not sit long, therefore, but rose and went and called the two brothers, and she said,
“You need not hasten yourself, for he is dead already.”
But they answered her call and they did hasten themselves and they came out, the elder with his satin under robes all rumpled with sleep and his hair awry, and they went at once to their father. There he lay as Pear Blossom had straightened him, and these two sons of his stared at him as though they had never seen him before and as though they were half afraid of him now. Then the eldest son said, whispering as though there were some stranger in the room,
“Did he die easily or hardly?”
And Pear Blossom answered in her quiet way,
“He died without knowing he did.”
Then the second son said,
“He lies as if he slept and were not dead at all.”
When these two sons had stared for a while at their dead father they seemed filled with some vague and confused fear, because he lay there so helpless for them to gaze upon, and Pear Blossom divined their fear and she said gently,
“There is much to be done for him yet.”
Then the two men started and they were glad to be reminded of living things again, and the elder smoothed his robes over himself hastily and passed his hand over his face and he said huskily,
“True — true — we must be about his funeral—” and they hastened away, glad to be out of that house where their father lay dead.
II
NOW BEFORE WANG LUNG had died one day he commanded his sons that his body was to be left in its coffin in the earthen house until he was buried in his land. But when his sons came to this time of preparation for his funeral they found it very irksome to come and to go so far from their house in the town, and when they thought of the forty and nine days which must pass before the burial, it seemed to them they could not obey their father, now that he was dead. And indeed it was a trouble to them in many ways, for the priests from the town temple complained because they must come so far to chant, and even the men who came to wash and to dress Wang Lung’s body and to put his silken burial robes on him and to lift him into his coffin and seal it, demanded a double fee and they asked so much that Wang the Second was in horror. The two brothers looked at each other, then, over the old man’s coffin, and they each thought the same thing, that the dead man could say no more. So they called the tenants and told them to carry Wang Lung into the courts where he had lived in the town house, and Pear Blossom, although she spoke against it, could not prevail with them. When she saw her words useless, she said quietly,
“I thought the poor fool and I would never go to that town house again, but if he goes we must go with him,” and she took this fool, who was Wang Lung’s eldest daughter and a woman grown in years, but still the same foolish child she had been all her life, and they followed behind Wang Lung’s coffin as it went along the country road, and the fool went laughing because the day was fair and warm with spring and the sun shone so brightly.
Thus did Pear Blossom go yet again to the court where she had lived once with Wang Lung alive, and it was to this court that Wang Lung had taken her on a certain day when his blood ran full and free even in his age, and he was lonely in his great house. But the court was silent now, and on every door in the great house the red paper signs had been torn off to show that death was here, and upon the great gates open to the street white paper was pasted for a sign of death. And Pear Blossom lived and slept beside the dead.
One day as she thus waited with Wang Lung in his coffin, a serving maid came to the door of the court and by her Lotus, Wang Lung’s first concubine, sent word that she must come and pay her respects to her dead lord. Pear Blossom must return a courteous word, and so she did, although she hated Lotus who had been her old mistress, and she rose and waited, moving a candle here or there as it burned about the coffin.
It was the first time Pear Blossom had seen Lotus since that day when Lotus knew what Wang Lung had done and she sent word to him that she wished never to see Pear Blossom again because she was so angry that he had taken into his own court a girl who had been her slave since childhood. She was so jealous and angry that she pretended not to know if Pear Blossom lived or died. But the truth was she was curious, and now that Wang Lung was dead she had told Cuckoo, her servant,
“Well, if that old man is dead, she and I have no more to quarrel over and I will go and see what she is like now.” Thus filled with her curiosity she had waddled out of her court, leaning upon her slaves, and she chose an hour when it was still too early for the priests to be there chanting by the coffin.
Thus she came into the room where Pear Blossom stood waiting, and she had brought candles and incense for decency’s sake, and she commanded one of her slaves to light these before the coffin. But while the slave did this, Lotus could not keep her eyes from Pear Blossom and she stared avidly to see how Pear Blossom had changed and to see how old she looked. Yes, although Lotus wore white shoes of mourning upon her feet and robes of mourning, her face did not mourn and she cried to Pear Blossom,
“Well, and you are the same small pale thing you ever were, and you are not changed. I do not know what he ever saw in you!” And she took comfort in this, that Pear Blossom was so small and colorless and without any bold beauty.