Sons Read Free

robes of mourning, her face did not mourn and she cried to Pear Blossom,
    “Well, and you are the same small pale thing you ever were, and you are not changed. I do not know what he ever saw in you!” And she took comfort in this, that Pear Blossom was so small and colorless and without any bold beauty.
    Then Pear Blossom stood by the coffin, her head hanging, and she stayed silent, but such a loathing filled her heart that she frightened herself and she was humbled by the knowledge that she could be so evil and hate even her old mistress like this. But Lotus was not one who could keep her old wandering mind even on hatred, and after she had stared her fill at Pear Blossom, she looked at the coffin and muttered,
    “A pretty heap of silver his sons paid for that, I’ll swear!” And she rose heavily and went and felt of the wood to appraise it.
    But Pear Blossom could not bear this coarse touch upon the thing she watched so tenderly and she cried out suddenly and sharply.
    “Do not touch him!” And she clenched her little hands on her bosom and drew her lower lip between her teeth.
    At this Lotus laughed and she cried out, “What—do you still feel so toward him?” And she laughed in easy scorn, and she sat awhile and watched the candles burn and sputter, and wearying of this soon, she rose and went out into the court to go away. But looking everywhere in her curiosity, she saw the poor fool sitting there in a patch of sunlight, and she called out,
    “What—is that thing still alive?”
    Pear Blossom went and stood beside the fool at this, and her loathing filled her heart still, so that she could scarcely bear it, and when Lotus was gone, she went and found a cloth and she wiped again and again the place on Wang Lung’s coffin where Lotus had put her hand, and she gave the fool a little sweet cake, and the fool took it merrily, since she had not expected it, and she ate it with cries of joy. And Pear Blossom watched her sadly for a while and at last she said, sighing,
    “You are all I have left of the only one who was ever kind to me or saw me for more than slave.” But the fool only ate her cake, for she neither spoke nor understood any who spoke to her.
    So Pear Blossom waited the days out until the funeral, and those days were very silent in the courts except for the hours when the priests chanted, for not even Wang Lung’s sons came near him unless they must for some duty. They were all somewhat uneasy and afraid in that whole house because of the earthy spirits a dead man has, and since Wang Lung had been so strong and lusty a man, it could not be expected that these seven spirits of his would leave him easily. Nor did they, for the house seemed full of new and strange sounds, and servant maids cried out that they felt chill winds seize them at night in their beds and toss their hair askew, or they heard mischievous rattling at their lattices, or a pot would be knocked out of a cook’s hand, or a bowl drop from a slave’s hand as she stood to serve.
    When the sons and their wives heard such servants’ talk they pretended to smile at it for foolishness of ignorance, but they were uneasy, too, and when Lotus heard these tales she called out,
    “He was ever a willful old man!”
    But Cuckoo said, “Let a dead man have his way, mistress, and speak well of him until he is under ground!”
    Only Pear Blossom was not afraid, and she lived alone with Wang Lung now as she had when he was living. Only when she saw the yellow-robed priests did she rise and go to her room and there she sat and listened to their mournful chanting and to the slow beating of their drums.
    Little by little were the seven earthy spirits of the dead man released, and every seven days the head priest went to the sons of Wang Lung and said,
    “There is another spirit gone out of him.” And the sons rewarded him with silver every time he came and said this.
    Thus the days passed, seven times seven, and the day drew near for the