Suddenly there was a heavy step and a stout elderly man entered and Wang Lung rose and bowed and they both bowed, looking secretly at each other, and they liked each other, each respecting the other for what he was, a man of worth and prosperity. Then they seated themselves and they drank of the hot wine which the servant woman poured out for them, and they talked slowly of this and that, of crops and prices and what the price would be for rice this year if the harvest were good. And at last Wang Lung said,
“Well, and I have come for a thing and if it is not your wish, let us talk of other things. But if you have need for a servant in your great market, there is my second son, and a sharp one he is, but if you have no need of him, let us talk of other things.”
Then the merchant said with great good humor,
“And so I have such need of a sharp young man, if he reads and writes.”
And Wang Lung answered proudly,
“My sons are both good scholars and they can each tell when a letter is wrongly written, and whether the wood or the water radical is right”
“That is well,” said Liu. “And let him come when he will and his wages at first are only his food until he learns the business, and then after a year if he do well, he may have a piece of silver at the end of every moon, and at the end of three years three pieces, and after that he is no longer apprentice, but he may rise as he is able in the business. And besides this wage, there is whatever fee he may extract from this buyer and that seller, and this I say nothing about if he is able to get it. And because our two families are united, there is no fee of guaranty I will ask of you for his coming.”
Wang Lung rose then, well-pleased, and he laughed and said,
“Now we are friends, and have you no son for my second daughter?”
Then the merchant laughed richly, for he was fat and well-fed, and he said,
“I have a second son of ten whom I have not betrothed yet How old is the girl?”
Wang Lung laughed again and answered,
“She is ten on her next birthday and she is a pretty flower.”
Then the two men laughed together and the merchant said,
“Shall we tie ourselves together with a double rope?”
Then Wang Lung said no more, for it was not a thing that could be discussed face to face beyond this. But after he had bowed and gone away well-pleased, he said to himself, “The thing may be done,” and he looked at his young daughter when he came home and she was a pretty child and her mother had bound her feet well, so that she moved about with small graceful steps.
But when Wang Lung looked at her thus closely he saw the marks of tears on her cheeks, and her face was a shade too pale and grave for her years, and he drew her to him by her little hand and he said,
“Now why have you wept?”
Then she hung her head and toyed with a button on her coat and said, shy and half-murmuring,
“Because my mother binds a cloth about my feet more tightly every day and I cannot sleep at night.”
“Now I have not heard you weep,” he said wondering.
“No,” she said simply, “and my mother said I was not to weep aloud because you are too kind and weak for pain and you might say to leave me as I am, and then my husband would not love me even as you do not love her.”
This she said as simply as a child recites a tale, and Wang Lung was stabbed at hearing this, that O-lan had told the child he did not love her who was the child’s mother, and he said quickly,
“Well, and today I have heard of a pretty husband for you, and we will see if Cuckoo can arrange the matter.”
Then the child smiled and dropped her head, suddenly a maid and no more a child. And Wang Lung said to Cuckoo on that same evening when he was in the inner court,
“Go and see if it can be done.”
But he slept uneasily beside Lotus that night and he woke and fell to thinking of his life and of how O-lan had been the first woman he had known and how she had been a faithful servant beside him. And he thought of what the child said, and he was sad, because with all her dimness O-lan had seen the truth in him.
In the near days after this he sent his second son away into the town and he signed the papers for the second girl’s betrothal and the dowry was decided upon and the gifts of clothing and jewelry for her marriage day were fixed. Then Wang Lung rested and he said to his heart,
“Well, and now all my children are provided for, and my poor fool can do nothing but sit in the sun with her bit of cloth and the youngest boy I will keep for the land and he shall not go to school, since two can read and it is enough.”
He was proud because he had three sons and one was a scholar and one a merchant and one a farmer. He was content, then, and he gave over thinking any more about his children. But whether he would or not there came into his mind the thought of the woman who had borne them for him.
For the first time in his years with her Wang Lung began to think about O-lan. Even in the days of her new-coming he had not thought of her for herself and not further than because she was a woman and the first he had known. And it seemed to him that with this thing and that he had been busy and without time to spare, and only now, when his children were settled and his fields cared for and quiet under the coming of winter, and now, when his life with Lotus was regulated and she was submissive to him since he had beat her, now it seemed to him he had time to think of what he would and he thought of O-lan.
He looked at her, not because she was woman this time, and not that she was ugly and gaunt and yellow-skinned. But he looked at her with some strange remorse, and he saw that she had grown thin and her skin was sere and yellow. She had always been a dark woman, her skin ruddy and brown when she worked in the fields. Yet now for many years she had not gone into the fields except perhaps at harvest time, and not then for two years and more, for he disliked her to go, lest men say,
“And does your wife still work on the land and you rich?”
Nevertheless, he had not thought why she had been willing at last to stay in the house and why she moved slowly and more slowly about, and he remembered, now that he thought of it, that in the mornings sometimes he heard her groaning when she rose from her bed and when she stooped to feed the oven, and only when he asked, “Well, and what is it?” did she cease suddenly. Now, looking at her and at the strange swelling she had on her body, he was stricken with remorse, although he did not know why, and he argued with himself.
“Well, and it is not my fault if I have not loved her as one loves a concubine, since men do not” And to himself he said for comfort, “I have not beat her and I have given her silver when she asked for it.”
But still he could not forget what the child had said and it pricked him, although he did not know why, seeing that, when he came to argue the matter out, he had always been a good husband to her and better than most.
Because he could not be rid of this unease toward her, then, he kept looking at her as she brought in his food or as she moved about, and when she stooped to sweep the brick floor one day after they had eaten, he saw her face turn grey with some inner pain, and she opened her lips and panted softly, and she put her hand to her belly, although still stooping as though to sweep. He asked her sharply,
“What is it?”
But she averted her face and answered meekly,
“It is only the old pain in my vitals.”
Then he stared at her and he said to the younger girl,
“Take the broom and sweep, for your mother is ill.” And to O-lan he said more kindly than he had spoken to her in many years, “Go in and lie on your bed, and I will bid the girl bring you hot water. Do not get up.”