Sons (29 page)

“Prepare the best dishes of your native parts, the hot peppery dishes and the fish dishes to go with wine, and everything with which we can make merry.”

He ordered good wines, too, and strings of firecrackers and rockets and all such things as please the people. And everyone was glad.

But just before the trusty men went to fulfill his command concerning those in the gaol Wang the Tiger suddenly thought of something, and it was that woman who was in the gaol, too. He had wanted her out a score of times during this winter, but each time he had not known what to do with her either, so he had contented himself with commanding that she be well fed and not chained as some were. Now when he thought of the prisoners free, he thought of her and he thought to himself,

“But how can I free her?”

And he wanted her free and yet he wanted her not so free that she could go away, and he was astonished at himself when he found he cared whether she came or went. He was astonished at his own heart, and being bewildered, he called his harelipped trusty man secretly into the room, where he slept and he said,

“But what of that woman we had from the lair?”

Then the trusty man answered gravely, “Yes, there is she, and I wish you would let me tell the Pig Butcher to put a knife to her throat in a way he has so that little blood flows.”

But Wang the Tiger looked away and he said, slowly,

“She is only a woman.” And he waited awhile and said, “At least I will see her again, and then I can know what I ought to do.”

The trusty man looked very downcast at this, but he said nothing and went away, and as he went Wang the Tiger called after him that the woman was to be brought at once to him in the hall of justice where he would go to wait for her.

He went into the hall of justice then and stepped up on the dais into the old magistrate’s seat out of some strange impulse of vanity he had, and he thought he would like to have the woman see him there in the great carven seat raised as it was above the other seats, and there was no one to say him nay, for the magistrate did not come out of his own rooms yet, having sent word he was ill of a flux. There Wang the Tiger sat very stiff and haughty and he kept his face smooth and proud as a hero’s ought to be.

At last she came in between two guards, and she wore a plain cotton coat and trousers of some dull blue common stuff. But this common garb was not what had changed her. She had eaten well, and the gauntness of her body was changed to a fulness that was still slender. Pretty she could never be because her face was too marked for prettiness, but she was very bold and beautiful. She came in steadily and freely and she stood before Wang the Tiger, quiet and waiting.

He looked at her in greatest astonishment, for he had not dreamed of a change like this, and he said to the guards,

“Why is she so still now, seeing how mad she was before?”

And they shook their heads and moved their shoulders and said, “We do not know, except that when she went out from our captain last time she went broken and weak as though some evil spirit had passed from her, and she has been like this ever since.”

“Why did you not tell me?” said Wang the Tiger in a low voice. “I would have had her freed.”

The guards were astonished at this and they said to excuse themselves,

“Sir, how could we know that our general cared what came to her? We waited for your commands.”

Then words flew of their own accord to the tip of Wang the Tiger’s tongue and he all but cried them out, “But I do care!” He did but barely stop them for how could he say such a thing out before all these guards and before this woman?

“Loose her from those bonds!” he shouted suddenly.

Without a word they loosed her and she stood free and they all waited to see what she would do, and Wang the Tiger waited also. She stood there as though she were still bound and she did not move. Then Wang the Tiger called out to her sharply,

“You are free—you may go where you will!”

But she answered, “Where shall I go, seeing I have no home anywhere?”

And saying this, she lifted up her head and looked at Wang the Tiger with a sudden seeming simplicity.

At that look the sealed fountain in Wang the Tiger was unstopped and such a passion rushed out into his blood that he began to tremble within his soldiers’ clothes. Now it was his eyes that dropped before hers. Now she was stronger than he. The room was filled with the air of this passion that had been stopped so long and men stirred uneasily and stared at each other. Suddenly Wang the Tiger remembered they were there and he roared at them,

“Get you gone, every one of you, and stand outside the door!”

They went away then, crestfallen, for they saw well enough what had befallen their general, even that which may befall any man, high or low. They went out then, and waited upon the threshold.

When there were none but these two left in the hall, Wang the Tiger leaned forward out of his carven seat and he said in a hard, hoarse voice,

“Woman, you are free. Choose where you will go and I will send one to take you there.”

And she answered simply, with all the boldness gone out of her, except that she could look at him in the eyes while she said it,

“I have chosen already. I am your bondswoman.”

I
F WANG THE TIGER
had been a coarse and common man and without feeling for what was lawful and decent he might have taken this woman, since she had no father or brother or any man to stand for her, and he might have done as he liked with her. But that hour in his youth which had been like a blow upon his heart made him fastidious still and it made his pleasure more keen to think he could wait, with all his passion, until he could have her as a wife. Moreover, he wanted her as wife, for mingled with all his personal passion for her, which fell more deeply on him hour by hour, was the craving also to have a son by her, his son, his first-born son, and only a true wife can bear a man his true son. Yes, half of the exultation of his secret longing for her was this, to think what a son they would form between them, he with his power and great tall body and all he had to bestow, and she with her fox-like beauty and her spirit of fearlessness. To Wang the Tiger when he dreamed of it, it seemed his son lived already.

In great haste, then, he called his harelipped trusty man and he bade him thus,

“Go to my brothers and tell them I want my share of the silver that was left to me when I should want to wed. I need it now for my marriage, for I have set my will upon this woman. Tell them to give me a thousand pieces of silver, for I have presents to give her and my men must have a very great feast on such a day and I must buy myself a new robe fit for the day. But if he gives you eight hundred, come back with it, and do not delay for the rest. And bid my brothers come and see the marriage, too, they and all they care to bring with them.”

The trusty man listened to this in greatest consternation, and his lower jaw hung hideously and he stammered forth in an agony,

“Oh, my general—oh, my captain—to that fox! But take her for a day—a time—not wed?”

“Be silent, fool!” Wang the Tiger roared at him then, starting up from his seat at the man. “Did I ask your counsel? I will order you beaten like a common criminal!”

The man hung his head then silent, but tears rose into his eyes and he went on his errand very heavily, for he felt the woman would bring his master nothing but evil and he muttered many times as he went along the road,

“Yes, and I have seen these fox women! Yes, and my general will never believe any evil I tell him! These fox women do always fasten themselves on the best men—it is always so!”

Thus he went along the road, his feet stirring the dust that lay thick through the dry winter days, and men passing him stared at him curious because of his muttering and because of his tears that rolled down his cheeks sometimes without his knowing it, and when they saw he paid no heed to anything except what was in his own heart, they set him down as mad, and gave him the wider half of the road.

But when this trusty man came with his message to Wang the Merchant, that one was for once startled out of his secret calm and he looked up from his table where he sat casting up accounts, for the trusty man, finding him not at his house, had come straight to his grain shop, and there he was at his desk in a corner behind the counters. He looked up and said in agitation, his pen arrested in his hand,

“But how can I suddenly withdraw so much money from the places where I have it loaned out? My brother ought to tell me when he is betrothed and so give me warning of a year or two. Such haste is scarcely decent in a wedding!”

Now Wang the Tiger knew his brother and how loath he was to part with money and so he had also told his trusty man before he went,

“If my brother delays you are to press him to the point and tell him plainly I will have the money if I have to come and fetch it myself. I will carry this thing through in three days after you return, and you are not to be away more than five. There is need for haste, for I do not know how long it will be before I have an army march down on me from above, for I cannot hope to remain unnoticed when the provincial ruler hears what I did in these courts. He will send men against me, even, and there can be no feasting and wedding on a battlefield!”

Now it was true enough that what Wang the Tiger had done by violence he must expect to be heard in the courts above him and it was true that he might be punished. But there was a deeper truth than this, and it was that Wang the Tiger was so hungry for this woman he could not wait for her longer than he must, and he knew he was useless as a warrior until he could have her safely for himself, and so set his mind free for something else. Therefore he had urged his trusty man and he grew fierce in his urging and he added,

“Well I know that merchant brother of mine will howl that he has his money where he cannot get it. You are not to heed him. Tell him I have my sword still, and the very swift and fine sword that I took from the Leopard when I killed him!”

But the trusty man kept this threat as a last resort and he did not use it up at the first, and not until Wang the Merchant seemed about to delay on another score, and it was that it was a shame to the family to wed into it a woman who had no family and no home, and had been a trollop, perhaps, as such women are. But the trusty man did not tell him it was a woman out of a robbers’ lair. No, although he was sorely tempted to tell it and tempted to hold back the woman by any means, yet he knew Wang the Tiger well enough to know he would have what he set himself to have, and so he used his threat.

Then Wang the Merchant had to scour about and get what silver he could, and he was in great distress of mind that he was compelled to call in money suddenly like this and lose its interest, and he went very gloomily to his elder brother and said,

“The sum of money due our younger brother for his marriage he calls for now, and he is going to wed some trollop or other whom we have never heard of! He is more like you than me, after all.”

Wang the Landlord scratched his head at this and cast about for an answer, and then decided on peace, and he said,

“It is a strange thing, for I thought he would call upon us when he felt the need and when he was established, and ask us to betroth him properly, since our father is dead who should have done it for him. Yes, I had a maid or two in mind even.” And in his heart he thought that surely he would have chosen a maid better than anyone else, seeing he knew women so well, and all the best maids, at least by hearsay, who were in the town.

But Wang the Merchant had been driven very irritable with the exigency and he sneered and said,

“Be sure you have a maid or two in mind! But that is nothing to me. The thing is what can you give of this thousand he wants, for I have no such great amount of cash to take out of my girdle suddenly like this!”

Wang the Elder stared heavily at his brother, then, and he sat staring with his hand on his fat knees, and he said huskily,

“You know all I have. I never have any ready silver. Sell a piece of my land again.”

Then Wang the Merchant groaned a little, for it was not a good time to sell before the New Year, and he had counted on the harvests of wheat to which the land was all planted. But after he had gone back to his shop and had fingered his abacus awhile and cast up his loss and profit, he found it would pay him to sell more land rather than to draw his money out of the places of high interest where he had it, and so he sold a fair field, and when he let it be known, many came to buy of him. He sold the land for a thousand pieces and a little odd sum over, but he gave the trusty man only nine hundred pieces, and held back the rest, lest Wang the Tiger demand more.

But the trusty man was a simple fellow, and he remembered that his master told him he was not to delay for a hundred pieces or so, and he went away with what he had. And Wang the Merchant hastened to put out at interest what had not been asked for, and he was a little comforted that he had saved this much, at any rate.

There was but one untoward thing in this transaction he made, and it was that when he sold the land he sold a piece or two not far from the earthen house, and Pear Blossom happened to be out on the threshing floor in front of the house. When she saw the knot of men gathered about the field, she shaded her eyes with her hand and looked through the sunshine and she knew what was being done. She hastened then to Wang the Merchant’s side and motioned him back a little from the others, and she opened her eyes with reproach and said to him,

“Again do you sell the land?”

But Wang the Merchant would not be troubled with her when he had so much else to trouble him, and he said bluntly,

“My younger brother is to be wed, and there is no other provision for the sum that is rightfully his for such a purpose except to sell a piece.”

Then Pear Blossom shrank back in the strangest way and she said no more. No, she went slowly back to the house, and from that day on her life narrowed itself yet more, and what time she did not spend in caring for the two children, as she called them always, she spent assiduously in listening to the nuns who came to visit her, and she besought them now to come every day. Yes, even in the morning, when it is ill luck to see a nun, and many will spit upon a nun if she cross their path before noon, because it is so ill an omen, Pear Blossom welcomed them always.