And the lad said suddenly, and his eyes were alight under his brows,
“There is to be a war such as we have not heard of—there is to be a revolution and fighting and war such as never was, and our land is to be free!”
Wang Lung listened to this in the greatest astonishment he had yet had from his three sons.
“Now what all this stuff is, I do not know,” he said wondering. “Our land is free already—all our good land is free. I rent it to whom I will and it brings me silver and good grains and you eat and are clothed and are fed with it, and I do not know what freedom you desire more than you have.”
But the boy only muttered bitterly,
“You do not understand—you are too old—you understand nothing.”
And Wang Lung pondered and he looked at this son of his and he saw the suffering young face, and he thought to himself,
“Now I have given this son everything, even his life. He has everything from me. I have let him leave the land, even, so that I have not a son after me to see to the land, and I have let him read and write although there is no need for it in my family with two already.” And he thought and he said to himself further, still staring at the lad. “Everything this son has from me.”
Then he looked closely at his son and he saw that he was tall as a man already, though still reedy with youth, and he said, doubtfully, muttering and half-aloud, for he saw no sign of lust in the boy,
“Well, it may be he needs one thing more.” And he said aloud then and slowly, “Well, and we will wed you soon, my son.”
But the boy flashed a look of fire at his father from under his heavy gathered brows and he said scornfully,
“Then I will run away indeed, for to me a woman is not answer to everything as it is to my elder brother!”
Wang Lung saw at once that he was wrong and so he said hastily to excuse himself,
“No—no—we will not wed you—but I mean, if there is a slave you desire—”
And the boy answered with lofty looks and with dignity, folding his arms on his breast,
“I am not the ordinary young man. I have my dreams. I wish for glory. There are women everywhere.” And then as though he remembered something he had forgotten, he suddenly broke from his dignity and his arms dropped and he said in his usual voice, “Besides, there never were an uglier set of slaves than we have. If I cared—but I do not—well, there is not a beauty in the courts except perhaps the little pale maid who waits on the one in the inner courts.”
Then Wang knew he spoke of Pear Blossom and he was smitten with a strange jealousy. He suddenly felt himself older than he was—a man old and too thick of girth and with whitening hair, and he saw his son a man slim and young, and it was not for this moment father and son, but two men, one old and one young, and Wang Lung said angrily,
“Now keep off the slaves—I will not have the rotten ways of young lords in my house. We are good stout country folk and people with decent ways, and none of this in my house!”
Then the boy opened his eyes and lifted his black brows and shrugged his shoulders and he said to his father,
“You spoke of it first!” and then he turned away and went out.
Then Wang Lung sat there alone in his room by his table and he felt dreary and alone, and he muttered to himself,
“Well, and I have no peace anywhere in my house.”
He was confused with many angers, but, although he could not understand why, this anger stood forth most clearly; his son had looked on a little pale young maid in the house and had found her fair.
33
Wang Lung could not cease from his thought of what his youngest son had said of Pear Blossom and he watched the maid incessantly as she came and went and without his knowing it the thought of her filled his mind and he doted on her. But he said nothing to anyone.
One night in the early summer of that year, at the time when the night air is thick and soft with the mists of warmth and fragrance, he sat at rest in his own court alone under a flowering cassia tree and the sweet heavy scent of the cassia flowers filled his nostrils and he sat there and his blood ran full and hot like the blood of a young man. Through the day he had felt his blood so and he had been half of a mind to walk out on his land and feel the good earth under his feet and take off his shoes and his stockings and feel it on his skin.
This he would have done but he was ashamed lest men see him, who was no longer held a farmer within the gates of the town, but a landowner and a rich man. So he wandered restlessly about the courts and he stayed away altogether from the court where Lotus sat in the shade and smoked her water pipe, because well she knew when a man was restless and she had sharp eyes to see what was amiss. He went alone, then, and he had no mind to see either of his two quarreling daughters-in-law, nor even his grandchildren, in whom was his frequent delight.
So the day had passed very long and lonely and his blood was full and coursing under his skin. He could not forget his youngest son, how he had looked standing tall and straight and his black brows drawn together in the gravity of his youth, and he could not forget the maid. And to himself he said,
“I suppose they are of an age—the boy must be well on eighteen and she not over eighteen.”
Then he remembered that he himself would before many years be seventy and he was ashamed of his coursing blood, and he thought,
“It would be a good thing to give the maid to the lad,” and this he said to himself again and again, and everytime he said it the thing stabbed like a thrust on flesh already sore, and he could not but stab and yet he could not but feel the pain.
And so the day passed very long and lonely for him.
When night came he was still alone and he sat in his court alone and there was not one in all his house to whom he could go as friend. And the night air was thick and soft and hot with the smell of the flowers of the cassia tree.
And as he sat there in the darkness under the tree one passed beside where he was sitting near the gate of his court where the tree stood, and he looked quickly and it was Pear Blossom.
“Pear Blossom!” he called, and his voice came in a whisper.
She stopped suddenly, her head bent in listening.
Then he called again and his voice would scarcely come from his throat,
“Come here to me!”
Then hearing him she crept fearfully through the gate and stood before him and he could scarcely see her standing there in the blackness, but he could feel her there and he put out his hand and laid hold of her little coat and he said, half choking,
“Child—!”
There he stopped with the word. He said to himself that he was an old man and it was a disgraceful thing for a man with grandsons and grand-daughters nearer to this child’s age than he was, and he fingered her little coat.
Then she, waiting, caught from him the heat of his blood and she bent over and slipped, like a flower crumpling upon its stalk, to the ground, and she clasped his feet and lay there. And he said slowly,
“Child—I am an old man—a very old man—”
And she said, and her voice came out of the darkness like the very breath of the cassia tree,
“I like old men—I like old men—they are so kind—”
He said again, tenderly, stooping to her a little,
“A little maid like you should have a tall straight youth—a little maid like you!” And in his heart he added, “Like my son—” but aloud he could not say it, because he might put the thought into her mind, and he could not bear it.
But she said,
“Young men are not kind—they are only fierce.”
And hearing her small childish voice quavering up from about his feet his heart welled up in a great wave of love for this maid, and he took her and raised her gently, and then led her into his own courts.
When it was done, this love of his age astonished him more than any of his lusts before, for with all his love for Pear Blossom he did not seize upon her as he had seized upon the others whom he had known.