Sons by Pearl S. Buck Read Free Book Online Page A

too red and too loud and the mother of my sons will not have her so,’” replied Wang the Eldest, wagging his head and feeling for his tobacco pipe in the girdle under his robe. He felt he had said a very good thing and he dared to smile a little.
    Now the lady was not one who was ever quick to answer and the truth was she could not answer many times as quickly as she longed to do, and one reason she hated her sister-in-law was because the country wife had a sharp witty tongue, although it was coarse, too, and before the townswoman could finish a speech she set out to make slowly and with dignity, the country wife had with some roll of her eyes and with some quick word interspersed put to naught the townswoman and made her seem absurd so that when the slaves and servants who stood by heard it they had to turn away quickly to hide their smiles. But sometimes a young maid turned too late and her laughter burst out of her with a great squeak before she could stop herself and then others must needs laugh as though at the noise she made, and the townswoman was so angry she hated the country wife with all her heart. So when Wang the Eldest said what he did, she looked at him sharply to see if he made sport of her too, and there he sat in a reed chair he had for his ease, and there he was smiling his soft smile, and she drew herself up very hard and she sat erect and chill upon the stiff wooden chair she always chose, and she dropped the lids over her eyes and made her mouth very small and tight and she said,
    “I know very well you despise me, too, my lord! Ever since you brought home that common creature you have despised me, and I wish I had never left my father’s house. Yes, and I wish now I could give myself to the gods and enter myself a nun somewhere and so I would if it were not for my children. I have given myself to building up this house of yours to make it more than a mere farmer’s house, but you give me no thanks.”
    She wiped her eyes with her sleeves carefully as she said this, and she rose and went into her room and soon Wang the Eldest heard her reciting aloud some Buddhist prayer. For this lady, of late years had recourse to nuns and to priests and she had grown very scrupulous in her duty to the gods and she spent much time in prayers and chants and the nuns came often to teach her. She made a parade, too, of being able to eat but a very little meat, although she had not taken the strict vows, and she did all this in a rich man’s house where there is no need for such worship as a poor man must give to the gods for safety’s sake.
    So now, as she always did when she was angered, she began to pray aloud in her room and when Wang the Eldest heard it he rubbed his hand ruefully over his head and he sighed, for it was true this lady of his had never forgiven him that he had come to the taking of a second woman into his house, a pretty, simple girl he saw on the street one day at a poor man’s door. She had sat on a little stool beside a tub washing clothes, and she was so young and pretty he looked at her twice and thrice as he passed, and he passed again and again. Her father was glad enough to let her go to so goodly a rich man and Wang the Eldest paid him well. But she was so simple that now he knew all she was Wang the Eldest did sometimes wonder how it was he had longed for her as he had, for she was so simple that she feared his lady very much and had no temper at all of her own, and sometimes when Wang the Eldest called for her to come to his room at night she even hung her head and faltered,
    “But will my lady let me tonight?”
    And sometimes when he saw how timid she was Wang the Eldest grew angry and vowed he would take a good, robust, ill-tempered wench next who would not fear his lady as they all did. But sometimes he groaned and thought to himself that after all it was better so, because at least he had peace between his two women, seeing that the younger one obeyed her mistress abjectly and