“Here am I and I will buy you a coffin second to my father’s only!”
But Ching’s ear were filled with his blood, and if he heard Wang Lung he made no sign, but he only lay there panting and dying and so he died.
When he was dead Wang Lung leaned over him and he wept as he had not wept when his own father died, and he ordered a coffin of the best kind, and he hired priests for the funeral and he walked behind wearing white mourning. He made his eldest son, even, wear white bands on his ankles as though a relative had died, although his son complained and said,
“He was only an upper servant, and it is not suitable so to mourn for a servant”
But Wang Lung compelled him for three days. And if Wang Lung had had his way wholly, he would have buried Ching inside the earthen wall where his father and O-lan were buried. But his sons would not have it and they complained and said,
“Shall our mother and grandfather lie with a servant? And must we also in our time?”
Then Wang Lung, because he could not contend with them and because at his age he would have peace in his house, buried Ching at the entrance to the wall and he was comforted with what he had done, and he said,
“Well, and it is meet, for he has ever stood guardian to me against evil.” And he directed his sons that when he himself died he should lie nearest to Ching.
Then less than ever did Wang Lung go to see his lands, because now Ching was gone it stabbed him to go alone and he was weary of labor and his bones ached when he walked over the rough fields alone. So he rented out all his land that he could and men took it eagerly, for it was known to be good land. But Wang Lung would never talk of selling a foot of any piece, and he would only rent it for an agreed price for a year at a time. Thus he felt it all his own and still in his hand.
And he appointed one of the laborers and his wife and children to live in the country house and to care for the two old opium dreamers. Then seeing his youngest son’s wistful eyes, he said,
“Well, and you may come with me into the town, and I will take my fool with me too, and she can live in my court where I am. It is too lonely for you now that Ching is gone, and with him gone, I am not sure that they will be kind to the poor fool seeing there will be none to tell if she is beaten or ill fed. And there is no one now to teach you concerning the land, now that Ching is gone.”
So Wang Lung took his youngest son and his fool with him and thereafter he came scarcely at all for a long time to the house on his land.
30
Now to Wang Lung it seemed there was nothing left to be desired in his condition, and now he could sit in his chair in the sun beside his fool and he could smoke his water pipe and be at peace since his land was tended and the money from it coming into his hand without care from him.
And so it might have been if it had not been for that eldest son of his who was never content with what was going on well enough but must be looking aside for more. So he came to his father saying,
“There is this and that which we need in this house and we must not think we can be a great family just because we live in these inner courts. Now there is my younger brother’s wedding due in a bare six months and we have not chairs enough to seat the guests and we have not bowls enough nor tables enough nor anything enough in these rooms. It is a shame, moreover, to ask guests to come through the great gates and through all that common swarm with their stinks and their noise, and with my brother wed and his children and mine to come we need those courts also.”
Then Wang Lung looked at his son standing there in his handsome raiment and he shut his eyes and drew hard on his pipe and he growled forth,
“Well, and what now and what again?”
The young man saw his father was weary of him but he said stubbornly, and he made his voice a little louder,
“I say we should have the outer courts also and we should have what befits a family with so much money as we have and good land as we have.”
Then Wang Lung muttered into his pipe,
“Well, and the land is mine and you have never put your hand to it.”
“Well, and my father,” the young man cried out at this, “it was you who would have me a scholar and when I try to be a fitting son to a man of land you scorn me and would make a hind of me and my wife.” And the young man turned himself away stormily and made as though he would knock his brains out against a twisted pine tree that stood there in the court.
Wang Lung was frightened at this, lest the young man do himself an injury, since he had been fiery always, and so he called out,
“Do as you like—do as you like—only do not trouble me with it!”
Hearing this, the son went away quickly lest his father change and he went well pleased. As quickly as he was able, then, he bought tables and chairs from Soochow, carved and wrought, and he bought curtains of red silk to hang in the doorways and he bought vases large and small and he bought scrolls to hang on the wall and as many as he could of beautiful women, and he bought curious rocks to make rockeries in the courts such as he had seen hi southern parts, and thus he busied himself for many days.
With all this coming and going he had to pass many times through the outer courts, even every day, and he could not pass among the common people without sticking his nose up and he could not bear them, so that the people who lived there laughed at him after he had passed and they said,
“He has forgotten the smell of the manure in the dooryard on his father’s farm!”
But still none dared to speak thus as he passed, for he was a rich man’s son. When the feast came when rents are decided upon these common people found that the rent for the rooms and the courts where they lived had been greatly raised, because another would pay that much for them, and they had to move away. Then they knew it was Wang Lung’s eldest son who had done this, although he was clever and said nothing and did it all by letters to the son of the old Lord Hwang in foreign parts, and this son of the Old Lord cared for nothing except where and how he could get the most money for the old house.
The common people had to move, then, and they moved complaining and cursing because a rich man could do as he would and they packed their tattered possessions and went away swelling with anger and muttering that one day they would come back even as the poor do come back when the rich are too rich.
But all this Wang Lung did not hear, since he was in the inner courts and seldom came forth, since he slept and ate and took his ease as his age came on, and he left the thing in the hands of his eldest son. And his son called carpenters and clever masons and they repaired the rooms and the moon gates between the courts that the common people had ruined with their coarse ways of living, and he built again the pools and he bought flecked and golden fish to put in them. And after it was all finished and made beautiful as far as he knew beauty, he planted lotus and lilies in the pools, and the scarlet-berried bamboo of India and everything he could remember he had seen in southern parts. And his wife came out to see what he had done and the two of them walked about through every court and room and she saw this and that still lacking, and he listened with great heed to all she said that he might do it.
Then people on the streets of the town heard of all that Wang Lung’s eldest son did, and they talked of what was being done in the great house, now that a rich man lived there again. And people who had said Wang The Farmer now said Wang The Big Man or Wang The Rich Man.
The money for all these doings had gone out of Wang Lung’s hand bit by bit, so that he scarcely knew when it went, for the eldest son came and said,
“I need a hundred pieces of silver here”; or he said, “There is a good gate which needs only an odd bit of silver to mend it as good as new”; or he said, “There is a place where a long table should stand.”