From the produce, Wang Lung in this good year had a handful of silver dollars over and above what they needed and these he was fearful of keeping in his belt or of telling any except the woman what he had. They plotted where to keep the silver and at last the woman cleverly dug a small hole in the inner wall of their room behind the bed and into this Wang Lung thrust the silver and with a clod of earth she covered the hole, and it was as though there was nothing there. But to both Wang and O-lan it gave a sense of secret richness and reserve. Wang Lung was conscious that he had money more than he need spend, and when he walked among his fellows he walked at ease with himself and with all.
5
The New Year approached and in every house in the village there were preparations. Wang Lung went into the town to the candlemaker’s shop and he bought squares of red paper on which were brushed in gilt ink the letter for happiness and some with the letter for riches, and these squares he pasted upon his farm utensils to bring him luck in the New Year. Upon his plow and upon the ox’s yoke and upon the two buckets in which he carried his fertilizer and his water, upon each of these be pasted a square. And then upon the doors of his house he pasted long strips of red paper brushed with mottoes of good luck, and over his doorway he pasted a fringe of red paper cunningly cut into a flower pattern and very finely cut. And he bought red paper to make new dresses for the gods, and this the old man did cleverly enough for his old shaking hands, and Wang Lung took them and put them upon the two small gods in the temple to the earth and he burned a little incense before them for the sake of the New Year. And for his house he bought also two red candles to burn on the eve of the year upon the table under the picture of a god, which was pasted on the wall of the middle room above where the table stood.
And Wang Lung went again into the town and he bought pork fat and white sugar and the woman rendered the fat smooth and white and she took rice flour, which they had ground from their own rice between their millstones to which they could yoke the ox when they needed to do so, and she took the fat and the sugar and she mixed and kneaded rich New Year’s cakes, called moon cakes, such as were eaten in the House of Hwang.
When the cakes were laid out upon the table in strips, ready for heating, Wang Lung felt his heart fit to burst with pride. There was no other woman in the village able to do what his had done, to make cakes such as only the rich ate at the feast. In some of the cakes she had put strips of little red haws and spots of dried green plums, making flowers and patterns.
“It is a pity to eat these,” said Wang Lung.
The old man was hovering about the table, pleased as a child might be pleased with the bright colors. He said,
“Call my brother, your uncle, and his children—let them see!”
But prosperity had made Wang Lung cautious. One could not ask hungry people only to see cakes.
“It is ill luck to look at cakes before the New Year,” he replied hastily. And the woman, her hands all dusty with the fine rice flour and sticky with the fat, said,
“Those are not for us to eat, beyond one or two of the plain ones for guests to taste. We are not rich enough to eat white sugar and lard. I am preparing them for the Old Mistress at the great house. I shall take the child on the second day of the New Year and carry the cakes for a gift.”
Then the cakes were more important than ever, and Wang Lung was pleased that to the great hall where he had stood with so much timidity and in such poverty his wife should now go as visitor, carrying his son, dressed in red, and cakes made as these were, with the best flour and sugar and lard.
All else at that New Year sank into insignificance beside this visit. His new coat of black cotton cloth which O-lan had made, when he had put it on, only made him say to himself,
“I shall wear it when I take them to the gate of the great house.”
He even bore carelessly the first day of the New Year when his uncle and his neighbors came crowding into the house to wish his father and himself well, all boisterous with food and drink. He had himself seen to it that the colored cakes were put away into the basket lest he might have to offer them to common men, although he found it very hard when the plain white ones were praised for their flavor of fat and sugar not to cry out,
“You should see the colored ones!”
But he did not, for more than anything he wished to enter the great house with pride.
Then on the second day of the New Year, when it is the day for women to visit each other, the men having eaten and drunk well the day before, they rose at dawn and the woman dressed the child in his red coat and in the tiger-faced shoes she had made, and she put on his head, freshly shaven by Wang Lung himself on the last day of the old year, the crownless red hat with the small gilt Buddha sewed on front, and she set him upon the bed. Then Wang Lung dressed himself quickly while his wife combed out afresh her long black hair and knotted it with the brass pin washed with silver which he had bought for her, and she put on her new coat of black that was made from the same piece as his own new robe, twenty-four feet of good cloth for the two, and two feet of cloth thrown in for good measure, as the custom is at cloth shops. Then he carrying the child and she the cakes in the basket, they set out on the path across the fields, now barren with winter.
Then Wang Lung had his reward at the great gate of the House of Hwang, for when the gateman came to the woman’s call he opened his eyes at all he saw and he twirled the three long hairs on his mole and cried out,
“Ah, Wang the farmer, three this time instead of one!” And then seeing the new clothes they all wore and the child who was a son, he said further, “One has no need to wish you more fortune this year than you have had in the last.”
Wang Lung answered negligently as one speaks to a man who is scarcely an equal, “Good harvests—good harvests—” and he stepped with assurance inside the gate.
The gateman was impressed with all he saw and he said to Wang Lung,
“Do you sit within my wretched room while I announce your woman and son within.”
And Wang Lung stood watching them go across the court, his wife and his son, bearing gifts to the head of a great house. It was all to his honor, and when he could no longer see them when they had dwindled down the long vista of the courts one inside the other, and had turned at last wholly out of sight, he went into the gateman’s house and there he accepted as a matter of course from the gateman’s pock-marked wife the honorable seat to the left of the table in the middle room, and he accepted with only a slight nod the bowl of tea which she presented to him and he set it before him and did not drink of it, as though it were not good enough in quality of tea leaves for him.
It seemed a long time before the gateman returned, bringing back again the woman and child. Wang Lung looked closely at the woman’s face for an instant trying to see if all were well, for he had learned now from that impassive square countenance to detect small changes at first invisible to him. She wore a look of heavy content, however, and at once he became impatient to hear her tell of what had happened in those courts of the ladies into which he could not go, now that he had no business there.
With short bows, therefore, to the gateman and to his pockmarked wife he hurried O-lan away and he took into his own arms the child who was asleep and lying all crumpled in his new coat.
“Well?” he called back to her over his shoulder as she followed him. For once he was impatient with her slowness. She drew a little nearer to him and said in a whisper,