Sons

XXIV

NOW WANG THE TIGER had it always in his mind that he must enlarge his place and his position for his son’s sake, and so he told himself often and he planned how he would do it, where he would creep in and make the victory at the end of some common war, how he would push southward of his river and seize the next county or two in a famine year when the people were pressed by drought or flood. But it happened that for a few years there was no great common war, and one weak and unready man after another came and went upon the central seat of government and if there was no sure peace still there was no great outburst of war, either, nor such a time as a lord of war could take to come out too boldly.

For a second thing, it seemed to Wang the Tiger that he could not as he once had done put his whole heart into his ambitions for enlarging himself, for there was this son of his to plan for and to tend, and after that were all his soldiers and the matters of the domain, for none had ever come to take the old magistrate’s place. Once or twice a name had been sent to Wang the Tiger but he had always rejected it quickly because it suited him better to be alone, and now as his son grew out of babyhood into his childhood Wang the Tiger thought sometimes that if he could put the state off for a few more years it would be a very good thing for himself to be the magistrate there when he was too old to be a warrior and when his son could take his place at the head of the army. But he kept this plan secret in himself for it was too soon yet to tell it forth. And indeed, the boy was now only six years old. But Wang the Tiger was in such haste for him to grow into a man that while sometimes the years went fast, yet at other times he thought they would never pass at all, and looking at his son he did not see him for the little lad he was, but for the young man, the young warrior, he would have him be, and without knowing it he forced the child in many ways.

When his son was but six years old Wang the Tiger took him away from his mother and out of the courts of the women, and brought him into his own courts to live with him. This he did so that the boy would not be made soft by women’s caresses and the women’s talk and ways, but partly he did it because he was in such haste for the boy’s constant companionship. At first the boy was shy and lost with his father and he wandered about with a look of fright in his eyes and when Wang the Tiger made a mighty effort and put out his hand to draw the child near the boy stood stiff and withdrawn and barely suffered his father, and Wang the Tiger felt the child’s fear and he yearned over the child, but he was speechless because he did not know what to say, and he could only let the lad go again. At first it had been Wang the Tiger’s purpose to cut the child’s life off clean from the mother and from the life of any woman, for he had only soldiers to serve him, but soon it could be seen that so clean a cut was beyond the endurance of so small and childish a heart. The boy did not complain at all. He was a grave and silent lad, patient to endure what he must, but he was never joyful. He sat by his father when his father called to him so to do, and he was dutiful to stand at once when his father came into the room where he was, and he read his books with his old tutor who came every day to teach him, but he never spoke more than he must.

One night Wang the Tiger watched him thus at his night meal, and the lad felt his father watching him and he bent his head over his bowl very low and made as though he ate, but he could not swallow. Then Wang the Tiger grew angry for indeed he had done everything he could think of for this child of his and that very day he had taken the lad with him to review his armies, and he set the lad across his saddle in front of him as he rode, and his heart swelled as the men cried out to the little general, as they called him. The lad had smiled faintly, and had turned his head away until Wang the Tiger forced him saying,

“Hold your head high — they are your men — your soldiers, my son! You shall lead them out one day to war!”

Thus forced the boy held up his head somewhat, but his cheeks were a burning dark red, and when Wang the Tiger leaned over he saw the boy did not look at the men at all, but looked far off into the fields beyond the grounds where the armies marched and when Wang the Tiger asked him what he saw he lifted his finger and pointed at a little sunburned naked lad in the next field who lay across a water buffalo’s back, staring at the brave show of soldiers, and the boy said,

“I would like to be that boy and lie on the buffalo’s back.”

Wang the Tiger was not pleased at such a common, low wish as this and he said sternly,

“Well, and I think my son might wish higher than to be a cowherd!”

And he bade the boy harshly that he was to look at the army and see how they marched and wheeled and how they held their guns aloft to charge, and the boy obediently did what his father said, and did not again look at the little herd.

But Wang the Tiger had been troubled the whole day for what his son had wished and now he looked at the child and he saw him bend his head lower and lower and he saw the boy could not swallow because he was weeping. Then Wang the Tiger was stricken with fear that his son was in some pain, and he rose and went to the child and took his hand and he cried out,

“Are you in a fever or something?”

But the small hand was cool and moist and the boy shook his head, and he would answer nothing for a long time even though Wang the Tiger forced him and he called for his harelipped trusty man at last to help him with his son. When the man was come Wang the Tiger was so torn with his anxiety and his fear and some anger, too, because the child was so stubborn, that he shouted to the man,

“Take this young fool out and see what you can find wrong with him!”

By now the boy sobbed desperately and he had put his head down on his arms to sob and hide his face, and Wang the Tiger sat there angry and near to weeping himself and his face worked and he pulled at his beard. Then the trusty man lifted the child in his arms and took him away somewhere and Wang the Tiger waited in agony for awhile, staring at the boy’s untasted bowl. When the man came back again but without the child, Wang the Tiger roared at him,

“Speak out and tell me all!”

Then half hesitating the man answered,

“There is no illness in him at all, and he only cannot eat because he is so lonely. He has never lived alone before and without a child and he longs for his mother and for his sisters.”

“But at his age he cannot play and idle his time away and with women,” said Wang the Tiger, half beside himself, and he tore at his beard and twisted himself in his seat.

“No,” said the man calmly, for he knew his master’s temper and did not fear him, “but he might return sometimes to see his mother, or his sister might come a few times to play, since they are both but children still, and by such means the parting might be eased for the lad, else he will be ill.”

Then Wang the Tiger sat silent awhile and he sat and suffered such mortal jealousy as he had never suffered before since that woman whom he had killed came back to torture him because she had loved the dead robber better than him. But now it was jealousy because his son did not love him wholly and longed for others than his father, and Wang the Tiger suffered because while he found his joy and pride in his son, his son was not content with even so great a love, nor did he value it, and for all he was surrounded with his father’s love, he yearned for a woman. And Wang the Tiger said to himself violently that he hated all women and he rose out of his seat passionately and he shouted at the trusty man saying,

“Let him go then, if he is such a weakling! What do I care what he does if he is to be a son, after all, such as my brothers have?”

But the trusty man answered gently,

“My general, you forget he is only a little child.”

And Wang the Tiger sat down again and groaned awhile and said, “Well, did I not tell you let him go?”

Thereafter once in five days or so the boy went into his mother’s court, and every time he went Wang the Tiger sat and gnawed his beard until the boy came back and then he questioned him this way and that as to what he had seen and heard, and he said,

“What were they doing there?”

And the boy made answer always, half startled by the passion in his father’s eyes, “Nothing, my father.”

But Wang the Tiger would persist and he cried, “Were they gaming or sewing or what? Women do not sit at nothing unless they gossip, and that is something, too!”

Then the boy put his mind to it and he knit his brows and made painstaking, slow answer,

“My mother cut out a little coat for my youngest sister out of some red flowered cloth, and my eldest sister, whose mother is not mine, sat and read a book to show how well she could do it. I like her better than my other sisters, because she understands when I speak to her and does not laugh at nothing as they do. She has very big eyes and her hair comes below her waist when it is braided now. But she never reads very long. She is restless and she likes to talk.”

This pleased Wang the Tiger and he said with pleasure, “So all women are and they are given to talking about nothing!”

It was the strangest jealousy in Wang the Tiger’s heart, for it drew him still further away from those others of his own household and he went more and more seldom to either of his wives. And indeed it looked as time went on as if this lad was to be his only son, for Wang the Tiger’s learned wife had never any more children than the one daughter, and the ignorant wife had two daughters, some years apart, and it came to be, that whether Wang the Tiger was not hot in his blood and had no great taste for women, or whether the love of his son made him content, he went at last no more to the courts of his wives. Partly it was some strange shame in him that after his son came to sleep in his room with him he was ashamed for the lad’s sake to rise and go out at night to a woman. No, as time went on Wang the Tiger did not, as many lords of war do when they grow rich and strong, fill their courts with feasting and with women. His treasure he poured into guns and more guns and soldiers, except the certain sum he laid by and increased steadily against the time when some disaster might befall him, and he lived sternly and simply and alone except for his son.

Sometimes, and it was the only woman who ever came into their courts, Wang the Tiger let his eldest daughter come in to play with his son, her brother. The first time or two her mother brought her there and she sat for a moment or so. But Wang the Tiger was very ill at ease to have her there, the more because he felt this woman reproached him for something or even that she yearned for something from him, and suffered under some loss he did not understand, and so he rose and went away with a few courteous words to explain his going. At last it seemed she ceased to expect anything from him and he saw her no more, and a slave brought the girl in to play at the rare times when she came.

But in a year or two even the girl came no more, and the mother sent word that she took her daughter to some school for learning, and Wang the Tiger was glad, because the girl came into the austere courts where he lived and she disturbed him because she wore so bright a coat and because she thrust a red pomegranate flower into her hair or a white jasmine that was very fragrant and she loved best of all to put a spray of cassia flowers into her braid, and Wang the Tiger could not bear cassia flowers, because the scent was so sweet and hot and he hated such scent. She was too merry, too, and willful and domineering and all the things he hated in a woman, and he hated most of all the light and laughter in his son’s eyes and the smiles upon his lips when his sister came. She alone could stir him into gayety and to running and play about the court.

Then Wang the Tiger felt his heart close in possession about his son and his heart closed against his daughter, and the faint impulse he had felt toward her when she had been a babe was gone now that she grew into a slender girl, and into the promise of a woman, and he was glad when her mother prepared to send her away and he gave silver freely and readily and he did not begrudge it at all, for now he had his son to himself.

He made haste before his son could be lonely again to fill his life full with many things and he said to his son,

“Son, we are men, you and I, and now cease to go into your mother’s courts except at those times when it is fitting to pay respect to her, for it is a very subtle easy way to waste a life with women, even with mother or sister, for they are still but women and still ignorant and foolish. I would have you learn every sort of soldier’s skill, now, both old and new. My trusty men can teach you all you need to know of old, the Pig Butcher how to use fist and foot, and the harelipped one how to wield sword and staff. And for the new ways I have heard of and never seen, I have sent to the coast and hired a new tutor for you, who learned his ways of war in foreign countries, and he knows every sort of foreign weapon and way of war. He is to teach you first and what time besides he has left he is to teach our army.”

The boy answered nothing but he stood as his wont was when his father spoke to him and he received his father’s words in perfect silence. And Wang the Tiger looking at the boy’s face tenderly saw no sign of anything he felt there, and he waited awhile and when the lad did not speak but only to say,

“May I leave the room if it is your will?” Wang the Tiger nodded his head and sighed without knowing why he did, or even that he sighed.

Thus Wang the Tiger taught and admonished his son and he saw to it that every hour of the boy’s life, beyond eating and sleeping, was filled with some learning or other. He made the boy rise early and practice his feints of war with the trusty men and when he had finished and had eaten his early meal he spent the morning with his books and when he had eaten again the new young tutor took him for the afternoon and taught him every kind of thing.

Now this new tutor was a young man such as Wang the Tiger had never seen before. He wore western clothes of war and spectacles upon his nose, and he had a very straight, swift body. He could run and leap and fence, and he knew how to set fire to all kinds of foreign weapons of war. Some he held in his hand and threw and they burst into flames, and some he fired like a gun with hand on a trigger, and there were many other kinds. And Wang the Tiger sat by as his son learned all these ways of war, and although the Tiger would not have said it, he learned of many things he himself had never even seen or heard of, and it came to him that it was a small thing to have been so proud of those two old foreign guns, and the only great guns he had. Yes, he saw he knew very little even of war, since there was more to know than he had dreamed, and now he would often sit far into the night talking to his son’s new tutor, and he learned of all sorts of clever ways of killing, the death from the air that drops down upon men, and the death that is in the bowels of the sea and comes up to kill, and the death that can fly more miles than men can see and drop and burst upon an enemy. Wang the Tiger listened to this in greatest wonder and he said,

“I see the people of the outer countries are very clever at killing and I did not know it.”

Then he began to ponder it all and one day he said to the tutor,

“I have a good rich territory in my hand and we do not have a complete famine more than once in ten or fifteen years, and I have a little silver put together. Now I see I have been too satisfied with my men, and I see that if my son is to learn all these new ways of war he must have an army skilled in such things, too. I will buy some of these machines that are used for war now-a-days in outer countries, and you shall teach my men and shape an army fit for my son when he comes to it.”

The young man smiled his quick and flashing smile and he was very willing and he said,

“I have tried to teach your men, but the discourteous truth is that they are a very ragged straggling lot and too content to eat and drink. If you will buy some new machines and if you will set hours of the day when they shall march and learn, I will see if they are to be shaped.”

Now Wang the Tiger was displeased secretly at such discourteous truth, for he had put many days of his life into teaching his men, and he said stiffly,

“You must teach my son first.”

“I will teach him until he is fifteen,” said the young tutor, “and then if you will permit me to advise one so high as you, I will say he should be sent to a school of war in the south.”

“What, can men learn war in a school?” said Wang the Tiger wondering.

“There is such a school,” replied the young tutor, “and such as come out of it are captains at once in the state’s army.”

But Wang the Tiger grew haughty at this and he said, “My son has no need to go and search for some little captain’s place in the state army as though he had not an army of his own,” and after a while Wang the Tiger said again, “Besides, I doubt if any good thing can come out of the south. I served under a southern general in my youth and he was an idle, lustful creature, and his soldiers little monkeys of men.”

The tutor, seeing Wang the Tiger was displeased, smiled and took his departure and Wang the Tiger sat on and he thought of his son and it seemed to him that surely he had done everything for his son that could be done. And he searched his heart painfully to remember his youth and he remembered that he had longed once for a horse of his own. The very next day therefore he bought a little black horse for his son, a strong good beast from the plains of Mongolia, and he bought it from a horse dealer whom he knew.

But when he gave it to the boy, and he called him out to see what he had for him, and there the little black horse stood in the court, a red saddle of new leather upon his back, and a red bridle studded with brass, and the groom who held the horse and whose sole duty was to tend it from this day on had in his hand a new whip of red braided leather. Wang the Tiger thought to himself proudly that it was such a horse as he himself might have dreamed of as a lad and thought too good to be alive, and he looked eagerly at his son to catch the pleasure that must break into his eyes and smile.

But the boy did not come out of his gravity at all. He looked at the horse and said, composed as he always was,

“My thanks, my father.”

And Wang the Tiger waited, but no light came into the boy’s eyes, and he did not leap forward to seize the bridle nor to try the saddle, and he seemed waiting to be allowed to go away.

Then Wang the Tiger turned away in furious disappointment and he went into his room and shut the door and he sat down and held his head in his hands and yearned over his son with anger and with bitterness of unrewarded love. But when he had grieved awhile he hardened himself again in his old way and he said stubbornly,

“Yet what more can he want? He has all I dreamed of when I was his age and more than I dreamed. Yes, what would I not have given for a teacher so skilled as he has, and for a fine foreign gun such as he has, and now a little shining black horse and the saddle and bridle red, and a red whip set into a silver handle!”

Thus he comforted himself, and he commanded the lad’s tutor to spare no teaching of this son of his, and not to heed the languors that the boy might have, for these are common to all lads who grow, and they cannot be heeded.

But at night when Wang the Tiger woke up and was restless he heard his son’s quiet breathing in the room and a suffering tenderness filled his breast and he thought to himself over and over,

“I must do more for him — I must think of something more I can do for him!”

Thus did Wang the Tiger spend his years upon his son and he might have slipped all unknowing into age, so engrossed was he, had not a certain thing come about that shook him out of his too great fondness and stirred him up to war again, and to his destiny.

It was on a day in spring when his son was nearly ten years old, for so did Wang the Tiger measure the years now by his son, and he sat under a budding pomegranate tree with the boy. The lad had been rapt before the little flame-like new leaves of the tree and he had cried out suddenly,

“I do swear that to me these little fiery leaves are more beautiful than the whole flower, even!”

Wang the Tiger was looking at them, painstaking in his attention to see what his son saw if he could, when there came a great commotion at the gates and one came running to Wang the Tiger to announce someone coming. But before the serving man could get the words from his mouth Wang the Tiger saw his pocked nephew come staggering in, lame from his swift riding, and he was haggard and weary with his riding by night and day, and the dust had settled into his deep pocks so that he was very curious to see. Words came slowly to Wang the Tiger so long as he was not angry and he could but stare at the young man and the young man gasped forth,

“I came on a winged horse by day and by night to tell you that the Hawk is plotting to divide himself from you and he has set up your army for his own and he has taken for his base the very city you besieged, and he is in some league with the old robber chief who has been itching these years for his revenge. I have known he held back revenue these last months and I feared some such outcome, but I have waited to make sure lest raising a false alarm the Hawk be offended and kill me secretly somehow!”

All this tumbled out of the young man’s mouth and Wang the Tiger stared out of his deep eyes and his eyes seemed to recede beneath his forehead as his black brows drew down more heavily and he felt his good hot rage come up to help him and he roared out,

“That accursed dog and thief — and I raised him up from a common soldier! Everything he owes to me, and he turns on me like the wild cur he is!”

And feeling his good, war-like anger rise higher and higher in him Wang the Tiger forgot his son and he strode to the outer courts where his captains lived and his trusty men and some of his soldiers, and he roared that five thousand men were to prepare to follow him within the forenoon and he shouted for his horse and for his keen and narrow sword. Everywhere those courts, which had lain quiet and at peace with the spring, became now like a turmoiled pool, and out of the women’s courts the children and the slaves peeped with frightened faces dismayed at so much shouting of weapons and war, and the very horses were excited and their hoofs clattered and pranced upon the tiles of the courts.

Then Wang the Tiger, when he saw all was astir as he had commanded, turned to the weary messenger and he said,

“Go and eat and drink and rest yourself. You have done very well and for this I shall raise you up. Well I know that many a youth would have joined the rebels, for it is always in the hearts of young men to rebel, but you have remembered our bond of blood to stay by me. Be sure I shall raise you up!”

Then the young man looked east and west and he whispered,

“Yes, but, my uncle, will you kill the Hawk? He will suspect when he sees you come for I told him I was ill and must go back to my mother for a while.”

Then Wang the Tiger promised in a great, furious voice, and he cried,

“You need not beg me, for I will burnish my sword upon his flesh!”

And the young man went away very content.

Then by forced marching Wang the Tiger led his men out the three days to the new territory and he led out his old and trusted men, and he kept at home those who had joined his ranks from the besieged city and the captain who had betrayed the robber chief lest they betray him also in his turn. He promised his good men that they should have their turn now to loot the city if they were brave for him, and he would give them besides a month’s extra wage in silver, so they marched with good hearts and ready feet.

They did so well that before the Hawk had any idea of such a mishap he heard that Wang the Tiger was upon him. The truth was that the Hawk had no knowledge of how wily and full of clever guile was the young man who was Wang the Tiger’s nephew, for the youth was so merry and his tongue so smooth and his pocked face so full of seeming ignorance except of a jest or of some bit of horseplay among the soldiers, that the Hawk thought all he did unseen. He was very glad when the youth said he was ill of some pain in his liver and that he must go home to his mother, and he planned that now he would put out his proclamations of rebellion and he would discover which men were loyal to him and the others he would put to death. To the men who would rebel with him he promised the freedom of the city for booty.

In these days, therefore, the Hawk fortified himself and he commanded food to be brought into the city, for well enough he knew Wang the Tiger’s temper that he would not be still and let things be, and in great terror the helpless people prepared themselves again for a siege. Even on that very day when Wang the Tiger came into the city gate he saw farmers coming by the score with their loads of fuel upon their poles across their shoulders, and donkeys and mules came with bags of grain crossed upon their backs, and men carrying baskets of squawking fowls or driving herds of cattle and carrying pigs trussed upon poles and squealing furiously as they felt themselves borne along, their heads hanging and feet up. And Wang the Tiger gnashed his teeth to see it all, for he knew that if he had not been told in time of the plot, he would have had a very difficult siege with all this food in the city, and the Hawk was a far greater foe than the witless old robber chief had been, for he was a clever man and very fierce and he had besides the two foreign weapons of war and he could set them on the city wall and turn them upon the besiegers. When Wang the Tiger thought of all he had missed so narrowly, his anger rose until his eyes were red and he gnawed and chewed at his beard. He let his anger rise then as deep and high as it would and he forced his horse on and shouted to his men that they were to go straight to the courts where the Hawk was encamped.

Now there were already those who had run to tell the Hawk that he was undone, for Wang the Tiger was already upon him, and the Hawk felt despair drop on him out of the skies. He hesitated but a moment to think whether or no he might brazen the hour out by guile, or whether he might rather escape by a secret way, and he had no hope at all that his men would dare to stand by him now, since Wang the Tiger brought so vast an army in. He knew he stood alone. But in that moment’s hesitation he was lost, for Wang the Tiger came galloping through the gates crying that the Hawk was to be caught at any cost and held for him to kill, and he turned himself off his saddle as he shouted and his men swarmed through the courts.

Then the Hawk, seeing his end was on him, ran and hid himself. Although he was a brave man, he ran and hid himself in the pile of grass in one of the kitchens. But what hope had he against the hordes that poured to find him who were fierce with their hopes of promised reward? Nor did the Hawk have any hope from his followers beyond that if one saw where he was hid, he would not tell it. He waited there in the grass, and if he hid, still did not tremble, for he was a brave man.

But he must be found, for they ran searching everywhere for him eager to find him and claim reward, and the gates front and back were guarded and the small gate of escape, and the walls to the courts were very high. So the Hawk was found by a handful of soldiers, and they saw an end of his blue coat in the grass and they ran out and clapped the door to, and yelled for others to come, and when some fifty men or so came running they went in cautiously, for they did not know what weapons the Hawk might have, although he was weaponless, except for a small, short dagger, useless against so many, for he had run out in distraction as he sat eating his morning meal. They fell upon him in a heap, then, and pinioned him and led him to their general, and the Hawk went sullenly, his eyes wild and the straw sticking in his hair and his clothes. Thus they led him to where Wang the Tiger sat in the great hall waiting, his sword drawn and shining like a narrow silver serpent stretched across his knees. He glowered at the Hawk from under his dark brows and he said harshly, “So you have turned traitor against me, who raised you up from a common soldier and made you all you are!”

The Hawk answered sullenly and without raising his eyes from the shining thing on Wang the Tiger’s knees,

“You taught me how to rebel against a general, and what were you but a runaway son, and who raised you if not the old general?”

Now when Wang the Tiger heard so rude an answer he could not bear it, and he shouted to the crowded soldiers who stood to see all they could,

“I thought I would drive my sword through him, but it is too clean a death for him! Take him and slice his flesh into strips as they do to criminals and those too wicked to live, to unfilial sons and traitors to the state!”

But the Hawk, seeing his end was come, and before any could stop him, pulled his small short dagger out of his bosom, and he plunged it into his own belly and gave it a great twist and left it sticking there out of his belly, and he stood staggering a moment, and he looked at Wang the Tiger as he died, and he said in his hard and reckless way,

“I do not fear to die! Another twenty years and I shall be born again in some other body — again a hero!” And he fell with his dagger still twisted in his entrails.

And Wang the Tiger, staring at what had come about almost before he could draw a breath, felt his anger ebbing out of him as he stared. He had been cheated of his revenge and yet for all his anger he was remorseful, too, that he had lost so brave a man as this rebel. He was silent for a while and at last he said in a low voice,

“You to the right and left of me, take his dead body away and bury it somewhere, for he was a lone man. I do not know whether he had father or son or any home.” And after a while he said again, “I knew he was brave but I did not know him so brave as this. Put him into a good coffin.”

And Wang the Tiger sat on awhile and sorrowed, and the sorrow made his heart soft so that he held his men back for a time from the looting he had promised. While he sorrowed, the merchants of that city came and craved an audience of him, and when he let them in to see what they desired of him, they came and with courtesy and much silver they besought him not to allow his men to be free in the city, saying that the people were in great terror. And being soft for the time, Wang the Tiger took the silver and promised to give it to his men in lieu of booty, and the merchants were grateful and went away praising so merciful a lord of war as this.

But Wang the Tiger had an ado to comfort his soldiers, and he had to pay them each one a good sum and he ordered feasts and wines for them before they would leave off their sullen looks and Wang the Tiger had to call upon their loyalty to him and promise them some further chance some other time of war before they settled to themselves again, and ceased their curses of disappointment. And indeed Wang the Tiger had to send twice to the merchants for other sums of silver before the thing was settled and the men satisfied.

Then Wang the Tiger prepared to return to his home once more, for he longed exceedingly to see his son, for he had left in such haste he had scarcely thought to plan for him these days he was away. This time Wang the Tiger left his trusty harelipped man to hold the city with the soldiers until his nephew could return and the Hawk’s men he led back with himself, leaving in their place certain tried and old men he had brought out when he came. And as precaution Wang the Tiger took the two great foreign guns with him, for he found the Hawk had had an ironsmith of the city make round balls for them and he had gunpowder to fire the guns, and Wang the Tiger took them so that he need never again fear them turned upon himself.

Now as Wang the Tiger marched back again through the streets of the city, the people looked as he passed and cast eyes of hatred upon him, for a tax had been levied upon every house to make up the vast sum that Wang the Tiger had needed to reward his soldiers and to pay his own cost of the expedition. But Wang the Tiger would not notice these looks, and he hardened himself and he reasoned in his own mind that these people ought to be willing to pay for peace, for if he had not come and delivered them they would have suffered greatly at the hands of the Hawk and of his men. For the Hawk was very cruel and men and women were nothing at all to him, and he had been used to wars from his childhood. The truth was Wang the Tiger felt that these people were very unjust to him, who had these days of hard marching, and they did not perceive they had been saved from anything and he thought to himself sullenly, “They have no gratitude for anything, and I am too soft of heart.” He hardened his heart with such thoughts, therefore, and he was never quite so kind again to common people as he once had been. He narrowed his heart still more, and he took no trusty man in the Hawk’s place for he said to himself drearily that not one could be trusted who was not of his blood, and in this narrowness he leaned yet more upon his beloved son and he comforted himself saying, “There is my son, and he alone will never fail me.” He hastened his horse then, and hurried his march, yearning for the sight of his son.

As for the nephew of Wang the Tiger, he waited until he had heard the Hawk was killed and the news made him very blithe and merry and he went to his home for a few days and there he told everyone how brave and wily he had been, and how he had been too clever for the Hawk, although the Hawk was so clever and wise a warrior, and old enough to be another generation. So he boasted everywhere, and his brothers and sisters stood about him in greatest delight to hear him, and his mother cried out,

“Even when this son suckled I knew he was no common child, for he did pull so hard and lustily at my breast!”

But Wang the Merchant sat and listened with his meager smile fastened upon his face, and if he was proud of his son he would not praise him and he said,

“It is a good thing to remember, nevertheless, that of the thirty-six ways out of difficulty the best way of all is to run away.” And he said, “Good guile is better than good weapon.”

And it was his son’s guile that pleased him most of all.

But when the pocked youth went to his uncle’s court to pay respect to Wang the Landlord and his lady, and he told his doughty tale there, Wang the Landlord was strangely jealous. He was jealous for his dead son, and he was jealous for these other two sons of his whom he admired for their lordly looks and ways and yet for whom he had vague fears, too, that there was something wrong in them. So although he seemed courteous when his brother’s pocked son told his tale, yet he lent but one ear, and while the young man talked in his eager way, the old man kept calling out for tea and for his pipe, and that he was chill now that the sun was down and he would have his light spring fur robe. As for the lady, she inclined her head to her nephew the very least she could in decency of mannerliness, and she took up a bit of embroidery and feigned to be very busy with it, matching this silk to that in the pattern, and she yawned loudly and often, and asked her lord this and that of some matter in the house or about the tenants on the land they still had left. At last the young man saw she was weary of him and he stopped his tale and went away, somewhat dashed. And before he had gone far he heard the lady raise her voice and say,

“I am glad no son of ours is a soldier! It is such a low life and it makes a young man very coarse and common.”

And Wang the Landlord answered listlessly, “Aye — I think I will go to the tea house for a while.”

Now the young man could not know that these twain thought of their dead young son, and he felt his heart sore in him until he came to the gate. But there stood Wang the Landlord’s second wife, with her last babe in her arms. She had sat listening to the young man’s tale, and had slipped out ahead of him and she said to him wistfully,

“But to me it is a very good, brave tale.”

And the young man went back to his mother comforted.

Three times ten days did this pocked nephew of Wang the Tiger stay in his home, for his mother took this chance to wed him to his betrothed, the maid whom she had chosen for him a few years before. Now this maid was the daughter of a neighbor, who was a silk weaver, but not a poor and common weaver who hires himself to others. No, the maid’s father had his own looms and he had twenty apprentices and made bolts of many-colored satin and flowered silks, and there were not many of his trade in the city, so that he did well at it. The maid, too, was clever at it, and she could, if the spring lingered on too chill, nurse the silkworm eggs against her own warm flesh until they hatched into worms, and she could feed the worms, as they should be fed to grow, upon the mulberry leaves the apprentices gathered, and she knew how to wind the silk from the cocoons. All such skill she had, a rare skill in that town, for the family had come the generation before from other parts. It was true that the young man she was to wed had no such use for her skill; still, Wang the Merchant’s wife felt it was something for a maid to have such knowledge and it made her thrifty and busy.

As for the young man, it was little to him what the maid could do, but he was glad to be wed, for he was now nearly twenty-four and troubled often with his desires, and he was pleased that the maid was neat and middling pretty and she seemed not to have any great temper of her own, and it was enough for him that she was so.

When the wedding was over, therefore, and it was good enough but without great display, he returned to the city to which Wang the Tiger had appointed him, taking his wife with him.