Sons (14 page)

She sighed and Pear Blossom saw that for all her pretences she was truly sad, and she said to divert her,

“Well we all know how good a wife you are and I have heard the nuns say you do learn the good rites more quickly than any lay sister they have ever taught.”

“Do they say so?” cried the lady greatly pleased, and she began to talk of what prayers she said and how many times a day and how some time she would take the vow against all meat eating, and how it behooved all of us who are mortal to think gravely of the future, since there are but heaven and hell for final resting places for all souls until the bitter round of life begins again, and the good have their reward and the evil theirs also.

So she prattled on and Pear Blossom did but half listen and with the other half of her heart she wondered heavily if she could believe what the man said when he promised to sell no more land, and it was hard for her to believe he could be true. And suddenly she was very weary and she took the moment when the lady was silent for an instant to sup tea, and she rose and said gently.

“Lady, I do not know what your lord tells you of his affairs, but if you can bring to his mind sometimes what his father’s last command was, that the land was not to be sold, I pray you will do it. My own lord labored all his life to bring together these lands that his sons of a hundred generations might rest upon a sure foundation, and it is surely not well that already in this generation they should be sold. I beg your help, lady!”

Now this lady had indeed not heard how much of the land was sold, but she would pretend there was nothing she did not know and so she said with great certainty,

“You need not fear that I will let my lord do anything that is unseemly. If land is sold it is only the distant bit that belongs to the third brother, because he has schemes to be a general, and to raise us all up, and he needs silver more than land.”

Now when Pear Blossom heard this same thing said over again she was somewhat reassured and she thought it must be true, if it were thus said again, and so she took her leave a little comforted. She bowed and said her farewells in her soft still way, giving every deference to the lady so that she left her complacent and pleased with herself. And Pear Blossom returned to the earthen house.

But Wang the Eldest saw his brother in the tea house to which he went and Wang the Second was there eating his noon meal, and he dropped himself down heavily beside the table where his brother sat alone and he said pettishly,

“It does seem as though men can never be free from the nagging of women, and as if I had not enough of it in my own house that last woman of our father’s must come and tell me she hears a rumor of the land being sold and she clamors to get me to promise it is not to be sold!”

Then Wang the Second looked at his brother, and his smooth thin face curved into its slight smile and he said,

“What do you care what such an one says? Let her say! She is the least in my father’s house and she has no authority of any kind. Pay no heed to her and if she mentions land to you, talk to her of anything except the land. Mention this and that to her but let her see you pay her no heed because she has no power to do anything. She should be glad she is fed every month and allowed to live on in that house.”

The serving man came at this moment with the account, and Wang the Second looked at it sharply and cast it up in his mind and found it correct. He took the few coins out then that were needed, and he paid the money out slowly as though he did protest that the charge should not have been wrong somehow. Then he bowed a little to his brother and went away, and Wang the Eldest stayed on alone.

In spite of what his brother said he felt some melancholy sitting with him and he wondered with a touch of fear what Pear Blossom had meant when she said the old man was not far away even though he was dead. And as he thought he grew very uneasy so that at last he called to the serving man and he ordered a rare and dainty dish of crabs to divert himself and make him able to forget what did not please him.

T
WICE AND THRICE DID
Wang the Tiger send his trusty harelipped man to his brothers and twice and thrice did the man bring back silver to his captain. He carried it on his back and wrapped in blue cloth as if it were some poor possession of his own and he was clad in a coarse blue coat and trousers and he was barefoot except for rough straw sandals. No one on the road seeing this man plod along in the dust with his load in a bundle on his back would have dreamed that he carried rounds of silver there or that he was anything more than some common fellow, although if anyone had taken thought to look more closely than usual he would have seen that the man sweated strangely under so small a load as he had. But no one looked at him as closely as this, since he was so poorly clad and his face was common and coarse and like a hundred others to be seen in a day except for his split lip, and if anyone stared at him a moment it was only to wonder at this hideous lip of his and at the two teeth he had growing out of the roots of his nose.

Thus safely the trusty man brought the silver to his captain, and when Wang the Tiger had enough buried under his tent to last him three months until he could establish himself, he set the day for his going forth for himself. He gave his own secret signal and the word ran among the men who were ready to go with him and on a certain day after the cutting of the rice harvest and before the cold came down out of the north, on a certain night when there was no moon until dawn and then but a warped thing hung crookedly in the sky, these men crept out each from his bed where he slept and they left the banner of the old general under whom they served.

A hundred men in all so crept forth on that dark night, and every man rose in utter silence and rolled his quilt and tied it upon his back and took up his gun if he had one, and he took his neighbor’s also if he could do it without waking the man, although this was not easy for by custom every man slept with his gun under his body in such a way that if anyone moved to take it from him he was awakened and could cry out. This was because a gun was so precious a thing and it could be sold for a heap of silver and sometimes men stole a gun to sell if they lost too heavily at gambling or if they were unpaid for many months when there was no war on, and no looting, and so no silver coming in. Yes, if a soldier lost his gun it was a grievous thing, for guns are brought from very distant and foreign parts of the world. On this night, therefore, the men who crept forth took what they could, but they did not get in all more than twenty guns or so beyond their own, because the soldiers all slept so warily. Still, twenty was good and they could enlarge their number by twenty men.

All these hundred soldiers were the stoutest men and the best that had fought under the old general, his bravest and most daring, his most ruthless and experienced among the younger soldiers he had. They were very few from the south and nearly all were come from wild inner provinces where men are bold and lawless and not afraid of dealing death. Such men were the more easily caught by the proud looks and the tall straight body of Wang the Tiger, and they admired his silences and his sudden angers and his ferocity, and they admired him the more because there was nothing now to worship in the fat old general who grew so fat he could not even climb his horse any more unless two men hoisted and heaved his legs over the saddle. Yes, there was not anything to fire a young man in such as he and so they were ready to desert him and to follow a new hero.

Each man with his gun then and each with his horse if he had one rose in the dead of that night at the signal, and the signal was when any man felt three light strokes upon his right cheek he was to rise instantly and buckle on his belt with his ammunition and take up what he had for a gun, and mount his horse or come on foot if he had not one, to a certain spot in a shallow valley that lay in the top of a mountain five miles away. There was an old temple there, deserted except for an aged hermit, dazed in his head, who lived among the ruins, and poor shelter though this was, it would shelter them until Wang the Tiger could shape them into an army and lead them on to the place he would choose.

Now Wang the Tiger had already prepared everything there and days before he had sent out the trusty man and his pocked nephew and they had wines set in the temple in jars and some live pigs and fowls and even three fat oxen penned into an empty cell where some priest had lived once. These Wang the Tiger had bought from farmers round about, and he was an honorable man and paid for all he took, and he would not, as some soldiers do, take what the poor have and pay nothing for it. No, he had his trusty man pay close to the full value and so the beasts were driven up the mountain to that temple and the pocked lad stayed there to watch them.

The trusty man had bought three great iron cauldrons, too, and he carried them up the mountain one by one over his head, and he set them on little ovens he built out of the old bricks of the ruined temple. But more than this he did not buy, for Wang the Tiger had it in his mind to go quickly away from this place and as quickly as he could to the north to some fastness there where he would be safe from the old general. Not that he wanted to go near the northern capital, either, lest he have to contend too soon with the state soldiers who come out sometimes against such lords of war as Wang the Tiger had it in his mind to be. Still, he feared neither of these very much, for the old general’s wrath was short-lived these days, and as for the state it was a time when one dynasty ended and no new dynasty had come up to take its place, and so the state was weak and robbers flourished and lords of war strove heartily together for highest place and there was nothing to restrain them.

To this temple, then, did Wang the Tiger come on that dark night and he took with him the pale son of Wang the Eldest, and it was a puzzle to him often to know what he would do with this timorous, down-cast youth. The pocked youth had rejoiced in the adventure and he had gone out merrily enough to do what he was told, but this other one hid himself out of sight and now when Wang the Tiger roared at him to follow him he crept shivering behind his uncle, and when Wang the Tiger flashed the light of his flaming torch on him he could see the lad was all of a sweat and Wang the Tiger shouted at him in scorn,

“How is it you sweat when you do nothing?”

But he did not stay to hear if there were any answer. He strode on through the night and the lad’s faltering footsteps followed.

There at the pass at the top of the mountain which led to the ruined temple Wang the Tiger set himself down upon a rock and he sent the lad into the temple to help with the food. He stayed there alone and he waited to see who would come to his banner that night out of all who had promised. Then men came in pairs and singly and in eights and tens, and Wang the Tiger rejoiced to see each one, and he called out to each,

“Ha, you are come!” and he called out, “Ha, you noble good fellows!”

Whenever he heard footsteps of those who came to join him as they came up the ruined stone steps of the temple path he took the smouldering torch he held in his hand and he blew it into flame and let its light fall over the faces and he exulted to see this good man he knew and that among those who came. Thus the one hundred assembled themselves, and Wang the Tiger told them off, and when all had come that he knew would come he commanded that the oxen be killed and the fowls and the pigs too. Then the men set themselves heartily to such a task, for they had not eaten very good meat in many a day. Some lit the ovens and set them roaring and some fetched water from a mountain stream that ran near there, and others killed the beasts and skinned them and hewed them in pieces. But when they had plucked the fowls they stuck them upon spits of green wood that were forked branches the men hacked from the trees about the temple, and these fowls they roasted whole before the fires.

Then when all was ready they spread the feast upon the stone terrace in front of the temple, a ruined terrace where the weeds were forcing the old stones apart. In the center was a great old iron urn, higher than a man is tall, but even it was crumbling into red dust it was so old. By this time it was day and the newly risen sun streamed down upon the men and the cool sharp mountain air made them famished, and they all crowded laughing and eager about the smoking food. And everyone ate and was filled full, and there was joy everywhere because it seemed to all that a new and better day was beginning for them under this new leader, young and brave, and he would take them into new lands where there were food and women and all the plenty a lusty man needs.

When they had satisfied their first hunger and before they fell to again they broke the clay seals of the wine jars and into each man’s bowl he carried they poured out wine, and they drank and laughed and shouted and they cried out to each other to drink to this and to that, and most of all to their new leader.

Out of the shadows of the bamboo thicket the poor dazed hermit watched them beside himself with wonder, and he muttered to himself, thinking they were devils. He stared to see them eat and drink so lustily and the water ran out of his mouth when he saw them tearing the smoking meats apart. But he did not dare to come out for he did not know what devils they were come suddenly like this into the quiet valley where none but himself had lived these thirty years alone, tending a bit of land to feed himself. And as he stared, one of the soldiers, being stuffed with food and drowsy with wine, threw away the thigh bone of an ox he chewed upon and it fell at the edge of the thicket. Then the hermit put forth his scrawny hand and seized it and drew it silently into the shadows and he put the bone to his own mouth and sucked and gnawed it, and he trembled strangely for he had not eaten meat all these years and he had forgotten the flavor of it and how good it was. And he could not but suck and mumble at the bone, although he groaned within himself as he did it, knowing through all his daze that for him this was a sin.

Then when they had eaten all they could and the remnants were strewed about the court, Wang the Tiger rose with a sharp swift leap and he leaped upon a monstrous old stone turtle that stood to one side and a little above the terrace at the base of a great old juniper tree. This turtle had once marked some famous grave place and it had borne on its back one past day a high stone tablet extolling the virtues of the one dead, but the tree in its indomitable growing had pushed this tablet aside so that at last it fell and now it lay split upon the ground with its letters rubbed away by wind and rain, while the tree grew on.