Pearl Buck - Dragon Seed - The Story of China at War

“Since what I do best is to lay my traps,” he said, “what good can I be there, where there is no enemy?”

His younger brother pulled down his eyebrows at him. “Do you tell me I go because there is no enemy there?” he asked in ready anger.

Lao Ta made a meager smile. “I hear you go because a woman is there,” he said. “Whether she is an enemy or not, I cannot tell.”

“Would she go to the free land if she were?” Lao San asked him angrily.

Now Lao Er had told him of the token of the flag, though Ling Tan would not let him bring it here lest the enemy find it on his person, should he by chance be stopped, as any might be. But even to hear of it was to Lao San proof of her he loved.

“How do I know anything about her?” Lao Ta answered. “I am a stupid man.”

Thus he refused his brother and he went away before Lao San could speak again and back to his work. But his anger smoldered in him and he did not go to his father’s house for many weeks, and then he was angry because no one sent word to ask why he did not come.

“Who cares whether I live or die?” he thought. It seemed to him that the good part of his life was over, and he thought of his little dead children and of Orchid and what a wife she had been to him, always ready and warm and kind, and how lonely he was without such a woman any more.

Thus brooding, he grew longing and ready for a change and yet where could he find a woman to take Orchid’s place?

“Be sure I will not ask my mother or my father to help me,” he thought. “If they do not care for me enough to do their duty to me, shall I beseech them and shame myself?”

But he knew he was ready to begin a life for himself and he wanted a wife and children again, and so without knowing he searched, he did search. But where was there a woman for him in that countryside? There were no women except old or sick, or those who had been fouled by the enemy, and he would not have a courtesan.

Yet one day he happened to find a woman. She was such a woman as once he would not have dreamed of thinking fit for him, but when a man grows as ready as he was now, any woman seems fit, if she is clean and whole. This was how he found her. He had chanced to lay a trap on a new road where he had not put one before and he had dug it deep and had put boards across strong enough to hold stones, and yet so cleverly that one board leaned upon another and the least weight would pull them all down. This he did because he had heard that the enemy was sending tax gatherers into that region within a day or two. When he had finished the trap, as he always did he went and warned the people who lived near that road not to use it until the enemy had passed by, and they thanked him.

When he opened that trap the next day to see what lay in it, he found a sobbing woman. She had been there all night, and since none came by, none had heard her crying for help. He peered down in the pale dawn light and he saw she was no enemy.

“I will bring you up,” he said, and he leaped down into the pit to help her up. Then he saw that though she was a woman no longer young, she had a soft pouting face and a childish mouth, and her eyes were red with weeping.

“I am so frightened that half my breath is gone,” she wailed.

“It was an evil chance that led you this way,” he said. “How could I know?”

He helped her as he spoke and pushing and pulling he got her up and on her feet, and she thanked him and put her clothes right. Then she said, wiping her face with the end of her blue cotton coat:

“Can you tell me where I am? I am a stranger, and my man was killed by the enemy and he told me I was to find his village if he died and his father and mother, and see if they would care for me.”

Then she named a village of which he had never heard.

“I think you are far wrong,” he said. “I never knew that village.”

At that she began to weep again and she said, “How can I go on? I have spent my money and now what can I do? I hear that the enemy is very evil to women, and what if I fall into their hands?” Then she looked piteously at him and she said, “You are an honest good man, and I see it in your face.”

At this he thought to himself, “Are not all women alike? Certainly this woman looks soft and kind. She is a widow, but is that her fault?”

And to her he said, “Have you had anything to eat?” When she said she had not he took her to the nearest inn, only stopping to lay his trap again, and there he bought some food for her and while she ate he sat thinking. He did not sit with her, for that would have been beneath him and discourtesy to her, but he watched her from the ends of his eyes, as he sat himself elsewhere and he thought, “Has not Heaven sent her? She fell into my trap.”

When she had finished eating, therefore, he told her to follow him. Then with much mustering of his courage, and he could not have done it had she not been so piteous and so anxious to please him for his kindness, he said to her:

“My own father’s house is not far from here, and a day’s walking will bring us to it and my mother is a good woman, so let me take you there.”

This he said to test her to see whether she would be willing. And why would she not be willing, who had no roof to creep under and no man to feed her? She said with great thankfulness:

“How can I refuse one into whose hand Heaven has put me?”

So without a word more he walked ahead of her toward his father’s house and she followed behind him, carrying her bundle of goods tied into a coarse blue cloth.

For many miles he said nothing to her, and when he did not speak she did not, but he heard her footsteps behind him in the dust. And as he went he thought, “If it is well, I will speak again before I reach my mother’s. I must give a reason for bringing home a woman.”

So when they were within sight of the village, he gathered all his courage together again and he turned and said to that woman, though his mouth went dry so to speak for himself:

“I have lost my wife and my two children. You have lost your husband. Are we not two parts? If we come together would we not be a whole?”

By the time the woman was so weary and so anxious to find a home for herself that she could scarcely have refused any man and so she said, “If you will have me!”

Lao Ta nodded and without more talk he went on, and so they came to his father’s house.

Now there could scarcely have been a worse moment for them to come than the one they had chanced upon. For early that morning Jade’s child had begun to come, and her labor had gone through the whole day and the child for some reason clung to the womb and would not come out. Ling Sao was beside herself, and Lao Er was frantic, and all the women of the village had gathered there each to tell what she would do. All had been done and still the child would not be born, and Jade’s courage was beginning to fail.

“This child is too big—” she whispered, and in her own heart she began to doubt whether or not she could bring it to birth.

So when at this moment Ling Sao beheld her eldest son come in with a strange woman, she had no time for what he wanted to say. Her temper was at its worst with what she had been through and the evil outlook ahead, yet the eldest son, being too simple to think of any except himself, blurted out as soon as he saw his mother:

“Mother, this woman is your new daughter-in-law.”

“Do not speak of daughters-in-law to me,” she cried. “I have eaten nothing but bitterness with them. Here is this Jade who cannot bear her child, and now what shall we do? There is nothing but bitterness in children and children’s children, and I am never to have any peace.”

Now this new woman had lived long enough to know what was best for herself, and the moment she came to the village she had liked it. Then she saw that this was a good farm and a fair farmhouse, and at her age how could she look for anything better? Her luck had put her in that trap and she must make the most of it, and thank the times for giving her a chance for a man as strong as this one, though he was ten years younger than she, at least. Well, then, she must try the more for him. So, weary as she was, she put down her bundle and smoothed back her hair, and she said in a soft and pleasant voice: