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.”

And Wang Lung gave him the silver bit by bit, as he sat smoking and resting in his court, for the silver came in easily from the land at every harvest and whenever he needed it, and so he gave it easily. He would not have known how much he gave had not his second son come into his court one morning when the sun was scarcely over the wall and he said,

“My father, is there to be no end to all this pouring out of money and need we live in a palace? So much money lent out at twenty per cent would have brought in many pounds of silver, and what is the use of all these pools and flowering trees that bear no fruit even, and all these idle, blooming lilies?”

Wang Lung saw that these two brothers would quarrel over this yet, and he said hastily, lest he never have any peace,

“Well, and it is all in honor of your wedding.”

Then the young man answered, smiling crookedly and without any meaning of mirth,

“It is an odd thing for the wedding to cost ten times as much as the bride. Here is our inheritance, that should be divided between us when you are dead, being spent now for nothing but the pride of my elder brother.”

And Wang Lung knew the determination of this second son of his and he knew he would never have done with him if talk began, so he said hastily,

“Well—well—I will have an end to it—I will speak to your brother and I will shut my hand. It is enough. You are right!”

The young man had brought out a paper on which was writ­ten a list of all the moneys his brother had spent, and Wang Lung saw the length of the list and he said quickly,

“I have not eaten yet and at my age I am faint in the morning until I eat. Another time for this.” And he turned and went into his own room and so dismissed his second son.

But he spoke that same evening to his eldest son, saying,

“Have done with all this painting and polishing. It is enough. We are, after all, country folk.”

But the young man answered proudly,

“That we are not. Men in the town are beginning to call us the great family Wang. It is fitting that we live somewhat suitably to that name, and if my brother cannot see beyond the meaning of silver for its own sake, I and my wife, we will uphold the honor of the name.”