He bought sweet-smelling soap in the shop, a piece of red scented stuff from foreign parts, and he rubbed it on his flesh, and not for any price would he have eaten a stalk of garlic, although it was a thing he had loved before, lest he stink before her.
And none in his house knew what to make of all these things.
He bought also new stuffs for clothes, and although O-lan had always cut his robes, making them wide and long for good measure and sewing them stoutly this way and that for strength, now he was scornful of her cutting and sewing and he took the stuffs to a tailor in the town and he had his clothes made as the men in the town had theirs, light grey silk for a robe, cut neatly to his body and with little to spare, and over this a black satin sleeveless coat And he bought the first shoes he had had in his life not made by a woman, and they were black velvet shoes such as the Old Lord had worn flapping at his heels.
But these fine clothes he was ashamed to wear suddenly before O-lan and his children. He kept them folded in sheets of brown oiled paper and he left them at the tea shop with a clerk he had come to know, and for a price the clerk let him go into an inner room secretly and put them on before he went up the stairs. And beyond this he bought a silver ring washed with gold for his finger, and as hair grew where it had been shaved above his forehead, he smoothed it with a fragrant foreign oil from a small bottle for which he had paid a whole piece of silver.
But O-lan looked at him in astonishment and did not know what to make from all this, except that one day after staring at him for a long time as they ate rice at noon, she said heavily,
“There is that about you which makes me think of one of the lords in the great house.”
Wang Lung laughed loudly then and he said,
“And am I always to look like a hind when we have enough and to spare?”
But in his heart he was greatly pleased and for that day he was more kindly with her than he had been for many days.
Now the money, the good silver, went streaming out of his hands. There was not only the price he must pay for his hours with the girl, but there was the pretty demanding of her desires. She would sigh and murmur, as though her heart were half broken with her desire,
“Ah me—ah me!”
And when he whispered, having learned at last to speak in her presence, “What now, my little heart?” she answered, “I have no joy today in you because Black Jade, that one across the hall from me, has a lover who gave her a gold pin for her hair, and I have only this old silver thing, which I have had forever and a day.”
And then for his life’s sake he could not but whisper to her, pushing aside the smooth black curve of her hair that he might have the delight of seeing her small long-lobed ears,
“And so will I buy a gold pin for the hair of my jewel.”
For all these names of love she had taught him, as one teaches new words to a child. She had taught him to say them to her and he could not say them enough for his own heart, even while he stammered them, he whose speech had all his life been only of planting and of harvests and of sun and rain.
Thus the silver came out of the wall and out of the sack, and O-lan, who in the old days might have said to him easily enough, “And why do you take the money from the wall,” now said nothing, only watching him in great misery, knowing well that he was living some life apart from her and apart even from the land, but not knowing what life it was. But she had been afraid of him from that day on which he had seen clearly that she had no beauty of hair or of person, and when he had seen her feet were large, and she was afraid to ask him anything because of his anger that was always ready for her now.
There came a day when Wang Lung returned to his house over the fields and he drew near to her as she washed his clothes at the pool. He stood there silent for a while and then he said to her roughly, and he was rough because he was ashamed and would not acknowledge his shame in his heart,
“Where are those pearls you had?”
And she answered timidly, looking up from the edge of the pool and from the clothes she was beating upon a smooth flat stone,
“The pearls? I have them.”
And he muttered, not looking at her but at her wrinkled, wet hands,
“There is no use in keeping pearls for nothing.”
Then she said slowly,
“I thought one day I might have them set in earrings,” and fearing his laughter she said again, “I could have them for the younger girl when she is wed.”
And he answered her loudly, hardening his heart,
“Why should that one wear pearls with her skin as black as earth? Pearls are for fair women!” And then after an instant’s silence he cried out suddenly, “Give them to me—I have need of them!”
Then slowly she thrust her wet wrinkled hand into her bosom and she drew forth the small package and she gave it to him and watched him as he unwrapped it; and the pearls lay in his hand and they caught softly and fully the light of the sun, and he laughed.
But O-lan returned to the beating of his clothes and when tears dropped slowly and heavily from her eyes she did not put her hand to wipe them away; only she beat the more steadily her wooden stick upon the clothes spread over the stone.
20
And thus it might have gone forever until all the silver was spent had not that one, Wang Lung’s uncle, returned suddenly without explanation of where he had been or what he had done. He stood in the door as though he had dropped from a cloud, his ragged clothes unbuttoned and girdled loosely as ever about him, and his face as it always was but wrinkled and hardened with the sun and the wind. He grinned widely at them all as they sat about the table at their early morning meal, and Wang Lung sat agape, for he had forgotten that his uncle lived and it was like a dead man returning to see him. The old man his father blinked and stared and did not recognize the one who had come until he called out,
“Well, and Elder Brother and his son and his sons and my sister-in-law.”
Then Wang Lung rose, dismayed in his heart but upon the surface of his face and voice courteous.
“Well, and my uncle and have you eaten?”
“No,” replied his uncle easily, “but I will eat with you.”
He sat himself down, then, and he drew a bowl and chopsticks to him and he helped himself freely to rice and dried salt fish and to salted carrots and to the dried beans that were upon the table. He ate as though he were very hungry and none spoke until he supped down loudly three bowls of the thin rice gruel, cracking quickly between his teeth the bones of the fish and the kernels of the beans. And when he had eaten he said simply and as though it was his right,
“Now I will sleep, for I am without sleep these three nights.”
Then when Wang Lung, dazed and not knowing what else to do, led him to his father’s bed, his uncle lifted the quilts and felt of the good cloth and of the clean new cotton and he looke at the wooden bedstead and at the good table and at the great wooden chair which Wang Lung had bought for his father’s room, and he said,
“Well, and I heard you were rich but I did not know yot were as rich as this,” and he threw himself upon the bed an, drew the quilt about his shoulders, all warm with summer though it was, and everything he used as though it was his own and he was asleep without further speech.
Wang Lung went back to the middle room in great consternation for he knew very well that now his uncle would never be driven forth again, now that he knew Wang Lung had wherewith to feed him. And Wang Lung thought of this and thought of his uncle’s wife with great fear because he saw that they would come to his house and none could stop them.
As he feared so it happened. His uncle stretched himsel upon the bed at last after noon had passed and he yawned loudly three times and came out of the room, shrugging the clothes together upon his body and he said to Wang Lung,