Sons

XV

NOW 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.

When the meal was over and they had finished their tea after they ate, Wang the Second took the trusty man to his elder brother’s gate, and there he bade the man wait until he could call his brother out and then they would go to a tea house to talk. But he told the man not to show himself lest the lady see him and they would need to go and hear her talk for a time. And so saying Wang the Second went inside and through a court or two to his elder brother’s own rooms, and there he found him lying fast asleep on a couch beside a brazier of red coals, snoring after his noon meal.

But when Wang the Eldest felt his brother’s light touch on his arm he started out of his sleep with a snort, and after being dazed for a while he understood what was wanted and he struggled up and drew on the fur robes he had laid aside, and he followed his brother softly so that he would not be heard. No one saw them go out except his pretty concubine who thrust her head out of a door to see who passed, and Wang the Eldest held up his hand as a sign of silence, and she let him go, for if she were timid and fearful of the lady, she was a kind, mild creature, too, and she could lie kindly and she would say she had not seen him, if she were asked.

They went together to the tea house and there the trusty man told his story over again, and Wang the Eldest groaned in his heart that he had not a son to give his younger brother, and he was jealous that his second brother’s son did so well. But he kept it to himself for once, and he only spoke well to the man and he agreed to all his brother said in the matter of moneys to be sent back, and he waited until he reached his home again.

Then suddenly it seemed as though his heart overflowed with jealousy and he went and sought out his eldest son. The young man lay in the curtained bed in his own room, and he lay there idle and flushed and reading a loose lascivious tale called The Three Fair Women, and he started when he saw his father come in and he hid the book under his robe. But his father did not even see it he was so full of what he had come to say and began in haste,

“Son, do you still wish to go to be with your uncle and rise with him to a high place?”

But the young man had outgrown that moment in his life and now he yawned delicately, and his mouth was as pretty and pink as a girl’s when he opened it thus and he looked at his father and smiled idly and he said,

“Was I ever so foolish as to want to go for a soldier?”

“But you will not be a soldier,” urged his father anxiously. “You will be from the first much higher than soldier, and next your uncle.” Then he lowered his voice, coaxing his son, “Your uncle is a general already and he has established himself by the wisest guile I ever heard of, and the worst is over.”

But the young man shook his head willfully, and Wang the Eldest, half angered and half helpless, looked at his son lying there on his bed. Some truthful sight came to this man at this instant, and he saw his son for what he was, a young man dainty and fastidious and idle, without any single ambition for anything except his pleasure, and his only fear that he was not better dressed and less in fashion than other young men whom he knew. Yes, Wang the Eldest saw his son lying on the silken quilts of his bed, and the young man wore silk to his very skin, and he had satin shoes on his feet and his skin was like a beauty’s skin, oiled and perfumed, and his hair was perfumed and smoothed with some foreign oil also. For the young man studied to make his body beautiful in every way, and well nigh he worshipped it for its softness and beauty, and his reward was that there were many who praised him for it among those whom he played with at night in gaming houses and playhouses. Yes, he was a young lord in a rich man’s house, as anyone could see, and none would have dreamed that his grandfather was one Wang Lung, a farmer, and a man of the earth. For this one instant did Wang the Eldest see his eldest son, although he was a man muddled and confused with many small things, and he was frightened for his son and he cried out in a high voice very different from his usual rolling tones,

“I am afraid for you, my son! I am afraid you will come to no good end!” Then he cried out more sharply than he ever had to this son of his, “I say you shall go and hew out some sort of a way of life and not grow old here in idle slothful pleasure!” And he wished in a sort of fright, which he did not understand in himself, that they had seized on the moment of the lad’s ambition. But it was too late; the moment was gone.

When the young man heard the unwonted sound of his father’s voice he cried out half afraid, half petulant, sitting up suddenly in his bed,

“Where is my mother? I will go and ask my mother if she will have me go or not, and I will see if she is so anxious to be rid of me!”

But Wang the Eldest, hearing this, fell back into himself again, and he said hastily and peaceably,

“We-well — let be — you shall do as you please since you are my eldest!”

And the cloud descended upon him again and the moment of clarity was gone. He sighed and thought to himself that it was true that young lords could not be as other common youths were, and he said to himself that it was true his brother’s wife was a very common woman, and doubtless his pocked son was little better than a servant to his uncle. So Wang the Eldest consoled himself vaguely and he shuffled as he went out from his son’s room. As for the young man, he lay back on his silk-covered pillow again, and he clasped his hands under his head and smiled his indolent smile, and after a while he felt for the book he had hidden and took it out and began to read it ardently once more, for it was a naughty, zestful book that a friend of his had commended to him.

But Wang the Eldest could not forget his vague despondency and it hung on him still so that for the first time his life did not seem so good to him as he thought it was. It was a very sore thing to him that when he had seen the trusty man gone again, his pilgrim’s wallet filled with silver and his belt stiff with silver about his waist, and his bundle filled with it so that he could hardly heave the thing to his back, that he could not think of anything Wang the Tiger could do for him yet, and it seemed a sore thing to him and his life very weary because he had no son to whom he could look for glory and he had nothing but his land that he hated and yet did not dare to part with altogether. His lady even saw his despondency and in his extremity he told her some of his trouble, and she had taught him so well that in his secret heart he did believe her wiser than himself, although he would have denied it stoutly if anyone had asked him if he did. But this time she gave him no help, for when he tried to tell her how great his younger brother had become she laughed shrilly and with scorn and she said,

“A general at a small county seat is no great lord of war, my poor old man, and you are silly to be so envious of him! When he is lord of war in the province it will be time enough to tell off our younger son to him, and more likely it will be your smallest son who is only a suckling now at the other’s breast!”

So Wang the Eldest sat silent then and for a time he did not go out as zestfully as he had to his pleasure places, and not even talk with his many friends seemed the worth it had before. No, he sat alone and he was not one to sit thus either, for he was a man who liked to be where there were people running to and fro in a commotion of some sort or other, even though it were but household bustle and servants bickering with a vendor and children crying and quarreling and the usual uproar of daily living. He liked even this better than to sit alone.

But now he sat alone because he was wretched and he did not know why he was except that for the first time it came to him that he was not so young as he was once and his age was creeping on him unawares, and it seemed to him he had not found the good in life he might have found and he was not so great as he should have been. Chiefest of all his vague miseries was one not vague, and it was the land he had from his father. It was a curse to him for it was his only livelihood and he must give it some oversight or he would have nothing to eat, he and his children and his wives and servants, and it seemed to him as though there were some vile magic in that land, and it was always seed time and he must go out to it or time to fertilize and he must see to it or it was harvest and he must stand in the hot sun and measure out grain or it was time to collect his rents; and there was all the hateful round of the land, forcing him to labor when he was by nature a man of leisure and a lord. Yes, even though he had an agent, there was some shrewdness in this man, even against his will, that made his gorge rise to think the agent grew rich at his expense, so that although he hated it he dragged himself each season to the place where he could oversee what was done.

He sat now in his own room and now under a tree in the court outside it if the winter sun were warm enough and he groaned to think how he must go out year after year or the robbers who rented his land from him would give him nothing. Yes, they were forever howling, “Ah, we have had floods this year,” and “Ah, we have such a drought as never was,” or else it was, “This is the year for locusts,” and they and his agent had a hundred tricks against him who was their landlord, and for the weariness of his strife with them he blamed and he loathed the land. He longed for the day when Wang the Tiger would be great enough so that his elder brother need no longer go out in heat and cold; he longed for the day when he could say, “I am brother to Wang the Tiger,” and it would suffice. Once it had seemed much that men had come to call him Wang the Landlord, for this was his name now, and it had seemed an honorable good name until this moment.

The truth was this that Wang the Landlord found it very hard because all his life so long as his father Wang Lung had lived he had received money freely from him enough to pay for all he needed, and he never labored over its coming. But after the inheritance was divided he labored more than he ever had and yet with all this labor to which he was unaccustomed he had not all the silver he needed, and his sons and wives never seemed to care how he labored.

No, his sons would wear the very best and they must have this fur in the winter and that dainty light fur to line their robes in the spring and autumn and all kinds of silks each in its season, and it was a hardship fit to break their hearts if they must wear a coat a little too long or a little wider in the cut than was this year’s fashion, for they feared more than anything the laughter of the young town dandies who were their companions. So with the eldest son, and now the fourth son was learning this also. Although he was but thirteen years old, he must have his little robes cut thus and so and a ring on his finger and his hair scented and oiled too, and a maid to serve him only and a man to take him out; and because he was his mother’s darling and she feared for him at the hands of evil spirits, he wore a gold ring in one ear, too, to deceive the gods and make them think him a girl and worthless.

As for his lady, Wang the Landlord could never persuade her that there was less silver in the house than there had once been and if he said when she wanted a sum of him, “But I have not so much to give you and I can only give you fifty pieces now,” she would cry out, “I have promised it to the temple for a new roof over a certain god, and if I do not give it I shall lose my dignity. Indeed you have it, for I know you spend money like water on wining and gaming and on all those low women I know you have and I am the only one in this whole house who looks to the things of the soul and to gods. Some day I may have to pray your soul out of hell, and you will be sorry I had not the silver then!”

So Wang the Landlord had somehow to find the silver, although he hated it very much to see his good money going into the hands of the smooth and secret priests whom he hated and did not trust, and of whom he heard certain very evil things. Yet he could never be sure, either, that they had not some knowledge of magic and he could never be sure, although he pretended disbelief in gods as things fit only for women, that there was not some power in them too, and this was another confusion in him.

The truth was that this lady of his was so deep now in her intimacy with gods and temples and all such things that she grew very holy and she spent many hours in going to this god and that, and it gave her the greatest pleasure to pass into a temple gate leaning as a great lady does upon her maids, and as she came in to see the priests of the temple and even the abbot came to her obsequious and bowing and full of flattery and full of talk that she was a favorite of the gods and a lay nun, and very near the Way.

When they talked thus she simpered and smiled and cast her eyes down and deprecated, but before she well knew what she did oftentimes she had promised them this and that and a sum of money more than she really wished to give. But the priests took care to give her full praise and they put her name up in many places as an example to all devout persons, and one temple even presented her with a wooden ensign painted vermilion red and there were gilt letters on it signifying how this lady was so devout and good a follower of the gods. This ensign was hung in a lesser hall of the temple, but where many might see it. After this she was the more proud and holy and devout in her looks, and she studied to sit calmly always and to fold her hands and often she went holding her rosary and muttering the syllables of her prayer while others gossiped or talked idly. Therefore being so holy she was very hard with her husband and she would have what silver she needed to keep up the name she had.

When Wang the Landlord’s younger wife saw what the lady had she wanted her little share, too, not for the gods, although the girl learned to prate of them to please the lady, but still she wanted her silver. And Wang the Landlord could not think what she did with it, because she did not dress herself in fine flowered silks or buy jewels and gold things for her dress and hair. Yet the money went from her quickly, too, and Wang the Landlord did not complain lest the girl go and weep before the lady, and the lady reproach him that since he had taken such an one he ought to pay her something. For these two women liked each other in some strange cool way, and they stood together against their husband if they wanted something for themselves.

One day Wang the Landlord did find out the truth, however, for he saw his younger wife slip out to a side gate and take something from her bosom and give it to one who stood there, and Wang the Landlord peered and he saw the man was her old father. Then was Wang the Landlord very bitter and he thought to himself,

“So I am feeding that old rascal and his family, too!”

And he went into his own room and sat and sighed and was very bitter for a while and he groaned to himself. But it was no use, and he could do nothing for if she chose to give what she had from her husband to her father and not to spend it on sweetmeats and clothing and such things as most women love, she had this right, except that a woman ought to cleave first to the house of her husband. But Wang the Landlord did not feel he could contend with her and he let it pass.

And Wang the Landlord was the more torn in himself, for he could not control his own desires, even though he did now honestly try for the first time in his life when he was nearly fifty years old, to spend less for his love of women. But he had his weakness with him yet, and he could not bear to be thought a niggard among them when his fancy fixed itself. Besides these two women in his house, he had the singing girl established as a transient wife by common agreement in another part of the city. But she was a pretty leech, and although he had finished with her soon, she held him by her threats of killing herself and of loving him above all the world, and she cried on his bosom and fixed her little sharp fingers into the deep flesh on his neck and she hung to him so that he did not know what to do with her.

With her she had her old mother also, a vile hag, and she in her turn screeched out,

“How can you cast off my daughter who has given you all? How would she live now, seeing that she has not been in a playhouse all these years you have had her and her voice is gone and others have taken her place? No, I will defend her and I will take her case to the magistrate if you cast her off!”

This frightened Wang the Landlord very much, for he feared the laughter of the town against him if they heard all this old woman’s ribald talk that she would vent against him in court if she could, so that he fumbled hastily for what silver he had. When the two women saw he was afraid, they plotted and made every opportunity they could for storm and weeping, knowing that when they did, he would pay them in haste. And the strangest thing of all was that with so many troubles, this great fat weak man still could not keep himself free, but must still be overcome with his desires at a feast somewhere and pay a new little singing girl he saw, even though when he came home and was himself on the next day, he groaned at his own folly and cursed his own fulsome heart.

But now, pondering all this during these weeks of his despondency he grew frightened at his own zestlessness, and he did not even care to eat so much as he had, and when he found his appetite for food waning he was frightened lest he die too soon, and he said to himself that he must rid himself of some of his troubles. And he determined that he would sell a good large share of his land and live on the silver, and he thought to himself secretly that he would spend what was his and his sons must care for themselves if there was not enough left for their lifetime. And it seemed to him suddenly that it was a vain thing for a man to stint himself for those who live on after him. He rose willfully then and he went to his second brother and he said,

“I am not fitted for the cares of a landlord’s life, for I am a city man, a man of leisure. No, I cannot with my increasing weight and years go out at seed time and harvest, and if I do one day I shall drop dead with the heat or the cold. I have not lived with common people, either, and they cheat me before I know it and out of all my land and my labor. Now this I ask of you. Act as my agent and sell a good half of my lands for me now and let me have the money as I need it, and what I do not need put out at interest for me, and let me be free of this accursed land. The other half I will keep to leave to my sons. But there is not one of them who will help me with it now, and when I say to my eldest son that he is to go for me sometimes to the land he is always pressed with a meeting with some friend or he has a headache and we shall starve if we continue as we are now. Only the tenants grow rich from the land.”

Then Wang the Second looked at this brother of his, and he despised him in his heart, but he said smoothly,

“I am your brother, and I will not take any commission at all for selling it and I will sell it for you to anyone who bids highest for it. But you must say what your lowest price is for each lot.”

But Wang the Landlord was very eager to be finished with his land and he said quickly,

“You are my brother and sell it for what you think fair. Shall I not trust my own brother?”

He went away then in high good humor because he was rid of half of his burden and he could go his way for a time and wait for silver to come into his hands as he longed to do again. But he did not tell his lady what he had done, because she might cry out against him that he had given them over into the other’s hand, and she would say that if he wished to sell, he ought to sell it himself to some among the many rich men with whom he feasted and with whom he seemed in such deep friendship, and Wang the Landlord did not wish to do this, for in his heart, for all his bluster, he trusted his brother’s wit more than he did his own. And now having done this, his heart rose again and he could eat once more, and once more his life seemed good enough to him and he thought to himself there were others more troubled than he, and he was ardent again.

Now Wang the Second grew more content than ever for he had all in his own hands. He planned that he would buy the best of his brother’s lands for himself. It was true that he paid a fair price for them, for he was not a dishonest man as men are reckoned, and indeed he told his elder brother that he bought a little of the best land to keep it in the family. But how much of the land he bought Wang the Landlord did not know, for Wang the Second had him sign the deeds when he was somewhat drunken and he did not look to see what name was on it, but being full of the good humor of drunkenness his brother seemed excellent to him and wholly to be trusted. He would not have been willing had he known to see so much of his land pass into Wang the Second’s keeping, perhaps, and so Wang the Second made much of the poorer pieces he sold to tenants or to whom it was who wished to buy. And it was true that Wang the Second did sell much land thus. But Wang Lung had been very wise in his day and he bought far more good land than any other kind, and so when all the business was over Wang the Second had in his own personal possession and for his sons the best and the choicest of all his father’s land, for he had so bought the best of the younger brother’s inheritance also. And with all this land he planned he would supply much of the grain to his own markets and increase his stores of silver and gold, and he grew powerful in the town and in that region, and men called him Wang the Merchant.

But unless he knew it no one would have dreamed this small meager man was so rich, for Wang the Merchant still ate the plain spare bit of food he always did and took no new wife into his house as most men will when they are rich, for show if for nothing else, and he wore the same sort of small patterned silk gown of a dark slate grey that he had always worn. In his house they added no new furniture, and in his courts there was no flower nor any waste thing, and what had been there before now was dead, for his wife was thrifty and raised flocks of fowls and these ran in and out of the rooms to pick up bits of food the children dropped, and they ran about the courts and plucked every grass blade and green leaf, so that the courts were bare except for a few old pines, and the earth grew hard and packed.

Nor would Wang the Merchant let his sons be spendthrift nor idle. No, he planned for each one, and each had a few years of schooling to learn to read and write and to count skillfully upon the abacus. But he would not let them stay long enough to be held scholars in any wise, for scholars will not labor at anything, and he planned apprenticeships for them and they were to come into his business. The pocked one he considered his younger brother’s, and the next one he planned to make his steward on the land, but the others he apprenticed when their time came and when each was twelve years old.

In the earthen house Pear Blossom lived on with the two children and every day of her life was like the one before it, and she asked no more than that it should be so always. She grieved no more for the land, for if she did not see the elder she saw the younger son of her dead lord come out before harvest time to estimate the growth of grain and to see the seed weighed off and all such things. Yes, and she heard, too, how Wang the Merchant, for all he was a townsman, was sharper as landlord than his brother even, for he knew to a ten catty weight what a field still standing in green grain would give, and his narrow little eyes were always sharp to see if a tenant pressed his foot secretly against the side of a load to weigh it down or if he poured water into the rice or the wheat to make it swell. His years in the grain market had taught him everything that country people do to cheat the merchant and the townsman, for they are enemies by nature. But if Pear Blossom asked whether any ever saw him angry when he found out a trick, the answer always came with unwilling admiration that he was never angry. No, he was only implacable and calm and more clever than any of them, and the nickname he had in that whole countryside was this, “He Who Wins in Every Bargain.”

It was a scornful name and full of hatred, and all the country people hated Wang the Merchant very heartily. But he did not care and he was even pleased to know what they called him, and he knew because an angry farm wife shouted it at him once with curses when he saw her sink a great round stone into the heart of a basket of grain about to be weighed, and she had done it when she thought his back was turned.

More than a time or two did a farm woman curse him, for a bitter-tongued woman is bolder than any man, and if a man were discovered in a trick he looked sullen or sheepish as his nature was, but a woman would curse and she would cry out after him,

“How is it that in one generation you forget how your father and your mother toiled on the land even as we do and they starved too, as we must, when you grind our blood and bones as you do now?”

Wang the Landlord had grown afraid sometimes when the people grew bitter, for he knew the rich may well fear the poor, who seem so patient and humble and who can be so bold and ruthless when they turn to rend whom they hate. But Wang the Merchant feared nothing, and it was nothing to him even when one day Pear Blossom saw him pass and she called to him and came out and said,

“If so be, sir, my lord’s son, that you can be a little less exact with the people, I should be glad. They labor very hard and they are poor and like children in ignorance, oftentimes. It goes against my heart to hear the cruel things they say, sometimes, about my lord’s sons.”

But Wang the Merchant only smiled and went his way. It was nothing to him what any said or did, so long as he had his full profits. His was the power and he feared nothing, for he felt himself secure in his riches.