Then when they were all accustomed to what had taken place and when O-lan had said to him, “Cease to be angry. It is a thing to be borne,” and Wang Lung saw that his uncle and his uncle’s wife and son would be courteous enough for the sake of their food and their shelter, then his thoughts turned more violently than ever to the girl Lotus and he muttered to himself,
“When a man’s house is full of wild dogs he must seek peace elsewhere.”
And all the old fever and pain burned in him and he was still never satisfied of his love.
Now what O-lan had not seen in her simplicity nor the old pian because of the dimness of his age nor Ching because of his friendship, the wife of Wang Lung’s uncle saw at once and she cried out, the laughter slanting from her eyes,
“Now Wang Lung is seeking to pluck a flower somewhere.” And when O-lan looked at her humbly, not understanding, she laughed and said again, “The melon must always be split wide open before you can see the seeds, eh? Well, then, plainly, your man is mad over another woman!”
This Wang Lung heard his uncle’s wife say in the court outside his window as he lay dozing and weary in his room one early morning, exhausted with his love. He was quickly awake, and he listened further, aghast at the sharpness of this woman’s eyes. The thick voice rumbled on, pouring like oil from her fat throat.
“Well, and I have seen many a man, and when one smooths his hair and buys new clothes and will have his shoes velvet all of a sudden, then there is a new woman and that is sure.”
There came a broken sound from O-lan, what it was she said he could not hear, but his uncle’s wife said again,
“And it is not to be thought, poor fool, that one woman is enough for any man, and if it is a weary hard-working woman who has worn away her flesh working for him, it is less than enough for him. His fancy runs elsewhere the more quickly, and you, poor fool, have never been fit for a man’s fancy and little better than an ox for his labor. And it is not for you to repine when he has money and buys himself another to bring her to his house, for all men are so, and would my old do-nothing also, except the poor wretch has never had enough silver in his life to feed himself even.”
This she said and more, but no more than this did Wang Lung hear upon his bed, for his thought stopped at what she had said. Now suddenly did he see how to satisfy his hunger and his thirst after this girl he loved. He would buy her and bring her to his house and make her his own so that no other man could come in to her and so could he eat and be fed and drink and be satisfied. And he rose up at once from his bed and he went out and motioned secretly to the wife of his uncle and he said, when she had followed him outside the gate and under the date tree where none could hear what he had to say,
“I listened and heard what you said in the courts and you are right. I have need of more than that one and why should I not, seeing that I have land to feed us all?”
She answered volubly and eagerly,
“And why not, indeed? So have all men who have prospered. It is only the poor man who must needs drink from one cup,” Thus she spoke, knowing what he would say next, and he went on as she had planned,
“But who will negotiate for me and be the middleman? A man cannot go to a woman and say, ‘Come to my house.’ “
To this she answered instantly,
“Now do you leave this affair in my hands. Only tell me which woman it is and I will manage the affair.”
Then Wang Lung answered unwillingly and timidly, for he had never spoken her name aloud before to anyone,
“It is the woman called Lotus.”
It seemed to him that everyone must know and have heard of Lotus, forgetting how only a short two summers’ moons before he had not known she lived. He was impatient, therefore, when his uncle’s wife asked further,
“And where her home?”
“Now where,” he answered with asperity, “where except in the great tea shop on the main street of the town?”
“The one called the House of Flowers?”
“And what other?” Wang Lung retorted.
She mused awhile, fingering her pursed lower lip, and she said at last,
“I do not know anyone there. I shall have to find a way. Who is the keeper of this woman?”
And when he told her it was Cuckoo, who had been slave in the great house, she laughed and said,
“Oh, that one? Is that what she did after the Old Lord died in her bed one night! Well, and it is what she would do.”
Then she laughed again, a cackling “Heh—heh—heh—” and she said easily,
“That one! But it is a simple matter, indeed. Everything is plain. That one! From the beginning that one would do anything, even to making a mountain, if she could feel silver enough in her palm for it”
And Wang Lung, hearing this, felt his mouth suddenly dry and parched and his voice came from him in a whisper,
“Silver, then! Silver and gold! Anything to the very price of my land!”
Then from a strange and contrary fever of love Wang Lung would not go again to the great tea house until the affair was arranged. To himself he said,
“And if she will not come to my house and be for me only, cut my throat and I will not go near her again.”
But when he thought the words, “if she will not come,” his heart stood still with fear, so that he continually ran to his uncle’s wife saying,
“Now, lack of money shall not close the gate.” And he said again, “Have you told Cuckoo that I have silver and gold for my will?” and he said, “Tell her she shall do no work of any kind in my house but she shall wear only silken garments and eat shark’s fins if she will every day,” until at last the fat woman grew impatient and cried out at him, rolling her eyes back and forth,
“Enough and enough! Am I a fool, or is this the first time I have managed a man and a maid? Leave me alone and I will do it. I have said everything many times.”
Then there was nothing to do except to gnaw his fingers and to see the house suddenly as Lotus might see it and he hurried O-lan into this and that, sweeping and washing and moving tables and chairs, so that she, poor woman, grew more and more terror stricken for well she knew by now, although he said nothing, what was to come to her.
Now Wang Lung could not bear to sleep any more with O-lan and he said to himself that with two women in the house there must be more rooms and another court and there must be a place where he could go with his love and be separate. So while he waited for his uncle’s wife to complete the matter, he called his laborers and commanded them to build another court to the house behind the middle room, and around the court three rooms, one large and two small on either side. And the laborers stared at him, but dared not reply and he would not tell them anything, but he superintended them himself, so that he need not talk with Ching even of what he did. And the men dug the earth from the fields and made the walls and beat them down, and Wang Lung sent to the town and bought tiles for the roof.