Sons (25 page)

“You see she is mad, my general!”

But Wang the Tiger said nothing. He only fastened his eyes on this strange wild creature, and he listened to her speech, for even when she cursed it was not the speech of a common or ignorant woman. He looked at her closely and he saw that although she was slender and now gaunt to thinness, she was still handsome and haughty, and she did not look like a thick country wench. Yet her feet were big and they looked as though they had never been bound, and this was not as it should be in those parts for a woman who came from a good family. He could make nothing of her, therefore, with all these contradictions, and he only stared on at her and watched her fine black brows twisting above her angry eyes and her thin pouting lips drawn back from her smooth white teeth, and as he watched it came to him that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Yes, even with her face pale and pinched and angry she was beautiful. So at last he said slowly,

“I have never known you at all. Why should you hate me?”

And the woman answered passionately, and she had a clear, piercing voice, “You killed my lord and I will not rest until I have revenged him. Though you kill me I will hold my dead eyes open until I am revenged for him!”

At this the guard was horrified and he lifted his sword and he cried, outraged, “To whom do you speak, vixen?” And he would have smote her across the mouth with the flat of his sword except that Wang the Tiger made a sign that she was not to be touched. Then Wang the Tiger said in his still way,

“Was the Leopard your master?”

And she cried in the same piercing, passionate voice, “Yes!”

Then Wang the Tiger leaned forward indolently and he said quietly and very scornfully,

“I have killed him. Now you have a new master, and it is I.”

At this the young woman lunged forward as if she would have fallen upon him and killed him if she could and the two guards struggled with her, and Wang the Tiger watched them. When they had her fast again so she could not move, the sweat poured down her temples and she was gasping and half weeping, but she stood and fixed her furious eyes on Wang the Tiger’s face. Then he met her eyes and stared at her and she stared back at him in defiance, and as though she did not fear him and would not look away and as if she had determined to down his look before she lowered her own bold eyes. But Wang the Tiger only stared on indomitably and without any anger visible, and with a mighty and calm patience and for all his depth of anger he had a power of such strong patience if he were not angry.

As for the woman, she stared on for a long time. But at last, although he still stared unmoved, her eyelids fluttered and she gave a cry and turned and she said to the guards,

“Oh, take me away to the gaol again!” And she would not look at him any more.

Then Wang the Tiger, smiling in the mirthless way he had, said to her,

“You see, I said you have a new master.”

But she would not answer him anything. She stood suddenly drooping and she parted her lips and panted a little, and at last he told the guards to take her away again and this time she went without any struggle, glad to go away from him.

Then Wang the Tiger was all the more curious to know who she was and he was very curious to know how she came to be in the robbers’ lair and he had it in his mind to know her story. So when the guard came back shaking his head and saying, “I have had wild ones in my hand in my day, but not like this tigress,” Wang the Tiger said to him,

“Tell the chief of the gaol that I must know who she is and why she was in the lair.”

“She will not answer any question,” said the guard. “No, she says nothing. The only change in her was that at first she would not eat but now she eats ravenously, yet not as though she were hungry but as though she ate to be strong for a purpose. But she will not tell anyone who she is. The women are curious and they have tried every cunning way to question her but she will not tell. Torture may force it from her, but even then I do not know, for she is so fierce and bitter a thing. Do you order torture, my general?”

Wang the Tiger thought for a while, then and at last he set his teeth together and he said, “If there is no other way, let it be by torture. She is to obey me. But it is not to be torture to her death.” And after a while he said again, “And break none of her bones and do not mar her skin.”

At the end of the day the guard came to him once more to make report and he said in consternation, “My general, high above me, it is not possible to make that woman say anything so long as we must torture her so gently as to break no bones and not mar her skin. She laughs at us.”

Then Wang the Tiger looked at him gloomily and he said, “Let her be for the time then. And give her meats and some wine to eat and to drink.” And he put the matter into the recesses of his mind, until he could think what to do with her.

Then while he waited for a thought to come to him, Wang the Tiger sent his trusty harelipped man southward to his old home and he bade the man tell his brothers all that had befallen him and how great his success was and how he had won it and lost but a few men, and how he had entrenched himself in his region. He warned the man, however, saying,

“You are not to boast too much of what I have done, for this small place and this little county seat is but the first step up the high mountain of glory before me, and you must not let my brothers drink I am as high as I plan to go, or they will come hanging on me and beg me to foist up this son of theirs or that and I want no more of their sons, no, even though I have not the son of my own I wish I had. Tell them the small measure of my success, and tell it so that they will be encouraged to give me the moneys I need still, for I have five thousand men now to feed and clothe, and they eat like wolves. But tell them I have begun and I shall go on until I have this province in my rule and after that more provinces. There is no boundary to my way.”

To all this the trusty man gave his promise, and he went his way south dressed as a poor pilgrim who goes to worship at some distant temple.

As for Wang the Tiger he set himself then to the settling of his men and it was true he had every right to take pride in what he had done. He had established himself honorably and not as a common robber chief and he was established in the magistrate’s court and as part of the government of that country. And everywhere by river and lake his fame went forth through that region and everywhere people spoke of the Tiger, and when he opened his lists for anyone to take service under him, as he now did, men flocked to his banners. But he chose them carefully and he rejected the old and unfit and such as looked weak or half blind or imbecile, and he paid off such of the state soldiers as did not seem able or strong, and there were many of these who had been in the army merely to have food to eat. Thus Wang the Tiger gathered to himself a mighty army of nearly eight thousand men, all young and strong and fit for war.

He took the hundred he had in the beginning, except the few who had been killed in the brawl with the robbers or who had been burned in the lair, and these he raised into captains and sergeants over the new men. But when all this was done, Wang the Tiger did not, as many men in his place would have done, sit in idleness and ease to eat and drink. No, he made himself rise early, even in the winter, and he taught and trained his men and he forced them to learn every skill of war and battle that he knew himself, and how to feint and to attack and to ambush, and how to retreat without loss. Everything he could he made up his mind he would teach them, for he had no purpose to stay forever in this small court of a county magistrate. No, his dreams were swelling in him, and he let them grow as great as they would.

N
OW THE TWO ELDER
brothers of Wang the Tiger had been waiting with hearty impatience to hear how he did with his venture, but each brother showed it in his own way. Wang the Eldest, since his son had hanged himself, pretended to have no more interest in his brother, and he mourned his son whenever he thought of him. His lady did, also, but her mourning found comfort in complaining against her husband and she said, often,

“I said from the first he ought not to go. I said from the first that it was an ill thing for a family like ours to send so good a son for a soldier. It is a low common life, and I said so.”

At first Wang the Eldest had been foolish enough to make answer to her and to say,

“Now, lady, I did not know you were unwilling, and it seemed to me you were ready enough, the more because he was to be no common soldier but my brother would raise him as he raised himself.”

But this lady had made up her mind as to what she had said, and she cried out vehemently,

“You never do know what I say because your mind is always on something else—some woman or other, I suppose! I said plainly and often that he ought not to go—and what is your brother but a common soldier? If you had listened to me, our son would have been living and well today and he was our best son and framed to be a scholar. But I am never listened to in my own house!”

She sighed and made a piteous face and Wang the Eldest looked east and west and he was very uneasy to have called this storm on himself and he did not answer a word, hoping that the force of her anger would spend itself more quickly thus. The truth was that now her son was dead the lady continually moaned that he had been her best son after all, although when he lived she scolded him too, and found fault with him, and thought her eldest son the best by much. But now the eldest was not good enough for her in anything and so the dead son seemed better. There was that third and hunchbacked one, but she never asked for him after she heard he liked to live with Pear Blossom, as he now did wholly, and she said if anyone spoke of him,

“He is not strong and the country air is good for him.”

She sent a little present to Pear Blossom sometimes in lieu of thanks, some small, useless thing or other, a little bowl of flowered pottery or a bit of cheap cloth only partly silk but brave in show or color, such as Pear Blossom never wore. But Pear Blossom always thanked her prettily, whatever the gift, and sent back fresh eggs or some produce of the land, careful always to return something and so owe nothing. Then she took the cloth and gave it to the fool, or she made a gay coat or shoes to please the poor thing, and she gave the pottery bowl to the hunchback if he liked it, or to the farmer’s wife who lived there in the earthen house, if she fancied the flowery town stuff more than her own blue and white ware.

As for Wang the Second he waited in his own way to hear what his younger brother did, and he listened secretly here and there and he heard rumors that the robber chief to the north of them had been killed by a new young brave, but he did not know if it were true or not or if the brave were his brother or not. So he waited and saved his money until the trusty man came, and he sold Wang the Tiger’s lands when he could do it prudently, and he put the money out at very high interest, and if he turned the money over a time or two more than he told anyone, this he considered his just wage for all the trouble he had for his brother, and he did no injury to his brother thus, for no one else would have done as well as he did for Wang the Tiger.

But on the day when the harelipped trusty man stood upon the threshold, Wang the Second could scarcely wait to hear his tale, and with an unused eagerness upon his face he drew the trusty man into his own room and poured tea out for him, and then the trusty man told what he had to say, and Wang the Second heard it through to the end without a word.

When it was finished, and the trusty man told it exactly and well and he ended as Wang the Tiger had told him to end, saying,

“Your brother and my general says we are not to be hasty and say he has climbed his mountain because this is but his first step and he holds but a small county seat and he dreams of provinces.”

Then Wang the Second drew his breath in a little and he asked,

“But do you think he is sure enough so that I can safely risk my own silver on him?”

Then the trusty man answered, “Your brother is a very clever man and many a man would have been content to settle into the robbers’ lair and maraud the region and so rise somewhat high. But your brother is too wise for that, knowing that a robber must turn respectable before he can be a king, and so he has the power of state behind him. Yes, although it is only a small magistrate’s seat, still it is the state and he is a state’s general, and when he goes out to fight with other lords of war and when he finds a cause of quarrel with someone as he will when the spring comes, then he can go out as one with authority and not as rebel.”

Such caution as this pleased Wang the Second very much, and so he said with more than usual heartiness, the hour being near to noon,

“Come out and eat and drink with us, if you will bear our common meal,” and he took the man with him and set him at their family table.

Then when Wang the Second’s wife saw the trusty man she cried a greeting to him in her hearty way and she said,

“What news of my little pocked son?”

The trusty man rose to his feet then and answered that her son was very well and he did well and the general was minded to raise him up, doubtless, for he kept him always about his person. But before he could say a word, the woman shouted that he was to sit and not stand in courtesy. So when he had sat down again he thought to tell them about how the lad had gone to the robbers’ lair and how tricky he was and how neatly he had done what he had to do. But he stopped himself, because he knew that women are so strange and their tempers are uncertain, and mothers are the strangest of all, for they see fears and harms about their children where there are no such things. He contented himself with silence, therefore, when he had said enough to please her.

In a few minutes she had forgotten all she asked, for she was busy about many things, and she bustled here and there fetching bowls and setting them out on the table, and she held a babe at her breast as she worked. The child suckled tranquilly, while with her free arm she was zealous in dipping out food to the guest and to her husband and to the clamoring, hungry children who did not eat at the table, but stood at the door or on the street with their bowls and chopsticks, and when their bowls were empty they came running in for fresh rice and vegetables and meats.