“Now about money,” said the woman sharply. But Wang Lung hesitated. He could not well speak before the Old Lord and this the woman instantly perceived as she perceived everything more quickly than speech could be made about it, and she said to the old man shrilly, “Now off with you!”
And the aged lord, without a word, shambled silently away, his old velvet shoes flapping and off at his heels, coughing as he went. As for Wang Lung, left alone with this woman, he did not know what to say or do. He was stupefied with the silence everywhere. He glanced into the next court and still there was no other person, and about the court he saw heaps of refuse and filth and scattered straw and branches of bamboo trees and dried pine needles and the dead stalks of flowers, as though not for a long time had anyone taken a broom to sweep it.
“Now then, wooden head!” said the woman with exceeding sharpness, and Wang Lung jumped at the sound of her voice, so unexpected was its shrillness. “What is your business? If you have money, let me see it.”
“No,” said Wang Lung with caution, “I did not say that I had money. I have business.”
“Business means money,” returned the woman, “either money coming in or money going out, and there is no money to go out of his house.”
“Well, but I cannot speak with a woman,” objected Wang Lung mildly. He could make nothing of the situation in which he found himself, and he was still staring about him.
“Well, and why not?” retorted the woman with anger. Then she shouted at him suddenly, “Have you not heard, fool, that there is no one here?”
Wang Lung stared at her feebly, unbelieving, and the woman shouted at him again, “I and the Old Lord—there is no one else!”
“Where then?” asked Wang Lung, too much aghast to make sense in his words.
“Well, and the Old Mistress is dead,” retorted the woman. “Have you not heard in the town how bandits swept into the house and how they carried away what they would of the slaves and of the goods? And they hung the Old Lord up by his thumbs and beat him and the Old Mistress they tied in a chair and gagged her and everyone ran. But I stayed. I hid in a gong half full of water under a wooden lid. And when I came out they were gone and the Old Mistress sat dead in her chair, not from any touch they had given her but from fright. Her body was a rotten reed with the opium she smoked and she could not endure the fright.”
“And the servants and the slaves?” gasped Wang Lung. “And the gateman?”
“Oh, those,” she answered carelessly, “they were gone long ago—all those who had feet to carry them away, for there was no food and no money by the middle of the winter. Indeed,” her voice fell to a whisper, “there are many of the men servants among the bandits. I saw that dog of a gateman myself—he was leading the way, although he turned his face aside in the Old Lord’s presence, still I knew those three long hairs of his mole. And there were others, for how could any but those familiar with the great house know where jewels were hid and the secret treasure stores of things not to be sold? I would not put it beneath the old agent himself, although he would consider it beneath his dignity to appear publicly in the affair, since he is a sort of distant relative of the family.”
The woman fell silent and the silence of the courts was heavy as silence can be after life has gone. Then she said,
“But all this was not a sudden thing. All during the lifetime of the Old Lord and of his father the fall of this house has been coming. In the last generation the lords ceased to see the land and took the moneys the agents gave them and spent it carelessly as water. And in these generations the strength of the land has gone from them and bit by bit the land has begun to go also.”
“Where are the young lords?” asked Wang Lung, still staring about him, so impossible was it for him to believe these things.
“Hither and thither,” said the woman indifferently. “It is good fortune that the two girls were married away before the thing happened. The elder young lord when he heard what had befallen his father and his mother sent a messenger to take the Old Lord, his father, but I persuaded the old head not to go. I said, ‘Who will be in the courts, and it is not seemly for me, who am only a woman.’ “
She pursed her narrow red lips virtuously as she spoke these words, and cast down her bold eyes, and again she said, when she had paused a little, “Besides, I have been my lord’s faithful slave for these several years and I have no other house.”
Wang Lung looked at her closely then and turned quickly away. He began to perceive what this was, a woman who clung to an old and dying man because of what last thing she might get from him. He said with contempt,
“Seeing that you are only a slave, how can I do business with you?”
At that she cried out at him, “He will do anything I tell him.”
Wang Lung pondered over this reply. Well, and there was the land. Others would buy it through this woman if he did not.
“How much land is there left?” he asked her unwillingly, and she saw instantly what his purpose was.
“If you have come to buy land,” she said quickly, “there is land to buy. He has a hundred acres to the west and to the south two hundred that he will sell. It is not all in one piece but the plots are large. It can be sold to the last acre.”
This she said so readily that Wang Lung perceived she knew everything the old man had left, even to the last foot of land. But still he was unbelieving and not willing to do business with her.
“It is not likely the Old Lord can sell all the land of his family without the agreement of his sons,” he demurred.
But the woman met his words eagerly.
“As for that, the sons have told him to sell when he can. The land is where no one of the sons wishes to live and the country is run over with bandits in these days of famine, and they have all said, ‘We cannot live in such a place. Let us sell and divide the money.’ “
“But into whose hand would I put the money?” asked Wang Lung, still unbelieving.
“Into the Old Lord’s hand, and whose else?” replied the woman smoothly. But Wang Lung knew that the Old Lord’s hand opened into hers.
He would not, therefore, talk further with her, but turned away saying, “Another day—another day—” and he went to the gate and she followed him, shrieking after him into the street,
“This time tomorrow—this time or this afternoon—all times are alike!”
He went down the street without answer, greatly puzzled and needing to think over what he had heard. He went into the small tea shop and ordered tea of the slavey and when the boy had put it smartly before him and with an impudent gesture had caught and tossed the penny he paid for it, Wang Lung fell to musing. And the more he mused the more monstrous it seemed that the great and rich family, who all his own life and all his father’s and grandfather’s lives long had been a power and a glory in the town, were now fallen and scattered.
“It comes of their leaving the land,” he thought regretfully, and he thought of his own two sons, who were growing like young bamboo shoots in the spring, and he resolved that on this very day he would make them cease playing in the sunshine and he would set them to tasks in the field, where they would early take into their bones and their blood the feel of the soil under their feet, and the feel of the hoe hard in their hands.
Well, but all this time here were these jewels hot and heavy against his body and he was continually afraid. It seemed as though their brilliance must shine through his rags and someone cry out,
“Now here is a poor man carrying an emperor’s treasure!”
And he could not rest until they were changed into land. He watched, therefore, until the shopkeeper had a moment of idleness and he called to the man and said,