Sons

XXVIII

IN THE SPRING OF the year when Wang the Tiger’s son was fifteen full years of age the tutor whom Wang the Tiger had hired for his son came to him one day as he walked in his court alone, and he said, “My general, I have taught the young general, your son, all that I can alone, and he needs to go into a school of war where he will have comrades with whom to march and to fight and to practice war.”

It seemed to Wang the Tiger, although he knew this day must come, as though a dozen years had passed as the turn of a hand. He sent for his son to come to him there in the court and he felt suddenly weary and old and he sat down upon a stone seat that was under a juniper tree and waited for his son. When the lad came through the round gate between the courts, walking with his steady somewhat slow step, Wang the Tiger looked at him newly. It was true that the lad was tall and nearly as high as a man, and his face had already taken on rougher curves and he kept his lips folded firmly and well together. It was a man’s face rather than a child’s. And as Wang the Tiger looked at this only son, he remembered with a sort of wonder that once he had been impatient for his son to be grown and a man, and once his babyhood had seemed endless. Now it seemed rather that he had leaped straight out of his babyhood into this new manhood. Then Wang the Tiger sighed and he thought to himself,

“I wish that school were not in the south. I wish he had not to go among those little southerners to learn!” And aloud he said to the tutor who stood pulling at a few short hairs he grew on his upper lip, “And you are sure he had better go to that school?”

The tutor moved his head to signify assent, and Wang the Tiger stared on at his son painfully and at last he asked the lad, “And yourself, my son, you wish to go?”

Now it was very rarely that Wang the Tiger ever asked his son what he liked, because he knew so well what he wanted for his son, but he had a small weak hope that if the boy refused to go he could use it as an excuse. But the boy looked up quickly, for he had been looking at a patch of white lilies that grew there under a juniper tree, and he said,

“If it were so that I could go to another school, I would like that very well.”

But this answer did not please Wang the Tiger at all and he drew down his brows and pulled at his beard and said pettishly,

“Now what school is there to which you could go except a school of war, and what use would stuff out of books be to you, who are to be a lord of war?”

The boy answered diffidently and in a low voice, “There be schools I have heard in these days where they learn how to till land and such things as have to do with the land.”

But Wang the Tiger was astounded at such foolishness, and he had never heard of such a school and he roared suddenly,

“Now here is foolishness, if it be true there are such schools! Well, and so every farmer must needs learn how to plow and sow and reap these days! Well, and I remember very well my father used to say a man needed not to learn to farm, for he had but to look at what his neighbor did!” Then he said very harshly and coldly, “But what has this to do with you or me? We are lords of war, and you shall go to a school of war or to no school at all, but stay here and take my army after me.”

His son sighed then and shrank away a little as ever he did when Wang the Tiger roared, and he said quietly and with some strange patience,

“I will go then to the school of war.”

Yet there was something in this patience which still made Wang the Tiger angry and he stared at his son and pulled at his own whiskers and he wished his son would speak out and yet he knew he would be angry if he heard what his son had in his heart, and he shouted,

“Prepare yourself, for tomorrow you shall go!”

The lad saluted him then as he had been taught to do and turned upon his heel and went away without a word more.

But in the night when he was alone in his room Wang the Tiger fell to thinking of his son going so far from him and a sort of terror came on him for what might befall his son in those parts where men were so tricky and deceitful, and he called out to his guard that his trusty harelipped man was to come in to him. When he was come Wang the Tiger turned to look at the hideous faithful face and he said, half pleading and not as master to man,

“That son of mine, my only son, is to go to a school of war tomorrow and even though his tutor goes, how do I know what that one’s heart is who has spent so many years in foreign parts? His eyes are hid behind his spectacles and his lips behind his hairs, and he seems strange to me when I think my son must trust wholly to him. Now you shall go with my son, for I know you, and there is no one else whom I know as I do you, who have been with me when I was poor and alone and you were then what you are now that I am rich and strong. My son is my best possession and you are to watch over him for me.”

Now here was a strange thing, for when Wang the Tiger said this the harelipped man spoke up stoutly and he was so earnest his words came whistling through his teeth,

“My general, in this one thing I will not obey you, for I will stay by you. If the young general must go, I will pick fifty good true men, not young, and I will teach them their duty to him, but I will stay where you are. You do not know how you need a true man near you, for in an army so great as yours there are always discontents and festerings and this man angry and that man talking of some better general, and there are very ugly rumors now of some new strange war gathering out of the south.”

To this Wang the Tiger answered stubbornly,

“You hold yourself too dear. Have I not the Pig Butcher yet?”

Then the harelipped man grew very scornful and he twisted his face, frightfully in his agitation and he said,

“That — that fool! Yes, he is well enough at picking flies out of the air, and if I tell him whom to strike and when to strike he can deal a blow with his great fist, but he has not wit enough to see anything until he is told where to look!”

He would not be moved at all, and Wang the Tiger commanded him and bore with his rebelliousness as he would never have borne with such refusal in any other, and at last the harelipped man said over and over,

“Well, and I can fall on my sword, then — well, I have my sword and my throat here together.”

In the end there was nothing to do but to give in to this man and when he saw Wang the Tiger would do so, he grew very cheerful although a moment before he had been doleful and talking of dying. He ran out that very night and chose his fifty men and he rounded them out of their sleep and he cursed them soundly as they stood dazed and yawning and shivering in the chill spring air in the court and he shouted at them through his split lip,

“If so much as a tooth aches in the young general’s mouth it will be your fault, O you who ought to die, and your whole business is to go with him wherever he goes and stand about and guard him! At night you are to lie about his bed, and in the day you are not to trust anyone or listen to anyone, no, not even to him. If he grows willful and says he will not have you and that you encumber him you are to answer, ‘We are under the old general, your father, and he pays us and we must hear him only.’ Yes, you are to guard him against his own self.” And he cursed the fifty men very richly and completely to frighten them well, and make them know how grave their duty was and at last he said, “But if you do well, you shall receive a good reward, for there is no more generous heart than our old general’s heart, and I will speak for you myself.”

Then they roared out their promise, for they knew this trusty man was nearer to their general than any except his own son, and the truth was they were pleased enough to go to foreign parts and see what they had not seen.

Then when the morning came Wang the Tiger rose from his sleepless bed and he let his son go and he went with him a way because he could not bear to part with him. Yet it was but a small respite and a little putting off of what must come, and when he had ridden awhile beside his son, he drew rein and said abruptly,

“Son, it has been said from ancient times that though a man go with his friend three thousand miles, yet must the parting come, and so it must be with you and me. Farewell!”

He sat very stiffly upon his horse then, and he received the obeisances of his son, and he sat and watched the lad leap into the saddle again and ride away with his fifty men and his tutor. Then Wang the Tiger turned his horse about and he rode back to his empty house, and he looked no more after his son.

Three days did Wang the Tiger allow himself to grieve, and he could not set his hand to do anything nor his heart to any planning until the last of the men he had sent out with his son as messengers came back to make report. They came back every few hours from different places upon the road and each brought his own report. One said,

“He is very well and rather more gay than his wont is. Twice he dismounted from his horse and stepped into a field where a farmer was and talked with him.”

“And what could he have to say to such an one?” asked Wang the Tiger, astonished.

And the man replied, remembering faithfully, “He asked him what seed he planted and he looked to see the seed, and he looked to see how the ox was tied to the plow, and his men laughed to see him, but he did not care and stared sturdily at the ox and how it was tied.”

Then Wang the Tiger was puzzled and he said, “I do not see why a lord of war should care to see how an ox is tied or what seed it is,” and he waited and then said impatiently, “Have you no more to say than this?”

The man thought a while and answered, “At night he stopped at an inn and he ate heartily of bread and meat and some soft rice and fish and he drank but one small bowl of wine. There I left him and came back to bring the news.”

Then another came and another with such news of how his son did and what he ate and drank and so they reported until the day when the lad reached the place where he was to go by boat upon the river to the sea. Then Wang the Tiger could but wait for some letter to come, for further than this men could not follow.

Now whether or not Wang the Tiger could have borne his restlessness without his son he did not know, but two matters came to divert and draw his heart out of himself. The first was that spies came back with strange news out of the south and they said,

“We hear a very curious war is coming up out of the south and it is a war of some sort of overturning and revolution and not a good and usual war between lords of war.”

Then Wang the Tiger answered somewhat scornfully, for he was very surly these days,

“It is not new at all. When I was young I heard of such a war of revolution and I went to fight in it, thinking I did a noble deed. Yet it was but a war after all, and while the lords of war united for a time against the dynasty, when they were successful and overthrew the throne they fell apart and for themselves again.”

Nevertheless, the spies returned all with the same tale, and they said,

“Nay, it is some sort of a new war and it is called a people’s war and a war for the common people.”

“And how can common people have a war?” answered Wang the Tiger loudly, raising his black brows at these silly spies of his. “Have they guns and will they wage war with sticks and staves and forks and scythes?” And he glared so at his spies that they were discomfited and coughed and looked at each other, and at last one said humbly,

“But we only tell what we hear.”

Then Wang the Tiger forgave them with majesty and he said,

“It is true, that is your duty, but you have heard nonsense.” And he dismissed them. Nevertheless, he did not wholly forget what they said, and he told himself he must watch the war and see what it truly was.

But before he could take much thought there arose another affair in his own regions which pressed upon him and drove out any other thought.

The summer drew near, and since nothing is so changeful as the heaven above men, it was a beauteous summer, with mingled rains and sun, and the waters receded and left the earth open and fertile, and wherever men could find a little seed they had but to thrust it into this warm, panting earth, steaming under the sunshine, and life leaped up out of that earth, and the harvest promised food and plenty for all.

But while they waited for harvest there were many men still hungry and that year robbers again grew rife in Wang the Tiger’s regions and worse than he had ever known them to be. Yes, even in his regions where he maintained his great army fed and paid, there were men so desperate they dared to form into robber bands and to defy him, and when he sent his soldiers after them, they were not to be found. They were like a band of ghosts, for Wang the Tiger’s spies would run back and tell him,

“Yesterday the robbers were to the north and they burnt the village of the Ch’ing family.” Or they would say, “Three days ago a band of robbers fell upon merchants and killed them all and took their goods of opium and silks.”

Then Wang the Tiger grew exceedingly angry to hear of such lawlessness and he was angry most of all because he was defrauded thus of his own revenues from merchants, which he needed sorely to make him free from Wang the Merchant and he grew so angry that he longed to kill someone. Then he rose up in his courts and shouted that his captains were to partition out his soldiers over that whole region and for every robber’s head they brought in he would give a reward of a piece of silver.

Yet when his soldiers rushed out, enticed by the reward, to seize the robbers they found none. The truth was many of these robbers were simple farming folk, and they only came out when they were not pursued. But if they saw the soldiers after them they dug and hoed in the fields and told sorry tales to the soldiers of how they had suffered at the hands of such and such a band and they told of any band except their own, and their own they never mentioned, or if they heard another mention it, they looked vacantly about and said they had never known such a band as that nor ever heard such a name. But because of the reward Wang the Tiger had promised and because many of his men were greedy, they killed any man they could and brought his head in and said it was a robber’s head, and none could say it was not, and so they received the reward. There were thus many man killed who were innocent, but no one dared to complain, for they knew that Wang the Tiger sent his men out in a good and lawful cause, and if they complained it might anger some soldier and draw attention to him who complained and put it in the soldier’s mind that this one who complained had a head also.

But one day in the midsummer when the sorghum cane was very high and much higher than men standing, the robbers spread everywhere like a sudden blaze of fire, and Wang the Tiger was angry to such a pitch that he rose up one day himself against the robbers, although he had not gone out thus for many a day and year. But he heard of a certain small band in a village, and his spies had watched and they had seen that by day the villagers were farmers and by night they were robbers. It seemed the lands these villagers had were very low and the village lay in a great hollow and the farmers had not been able to plant even so soon as others and so they were still not fed, such as had not starved in the winter and spring.

Now when Wang the Tiger had this certain knowledge of how evil these men were and how they went by night to other villages and robbed them of their food and killed those who resisted, his anger swelled up in him and he went himself with his men to that village and he commanded them to surround the village and leave no way open for any to escape. Then with other men he went galloping in and they seized every man, a hundred and seventy-three men in all, young and old. When they were caught and held and tied together by ropes, Wang the Tiger commanded them to be brought to a certain large threshing floor before the head villager’s house and there from his horse he glowered upon these wretched men. Some of them wept and trembled, and some were the color of clay, but some stood sullen and fearless having already known despair. Only the old men were tranquil and accepted whatever must come, since now they were so old, and every one of them expected death.

But Wang the Tiger when he saw he had them all, felt his killing anger cool in him. He could not kill as lustily as once he did; no, he had been secretly weaker since he killed the six men and saw his son’s look. And to hide his weakness now he drew down his brows and pursed his lips and he roared at them,

“You deserve to die, every man of you! Have you not known me these many years that I will not have robbers in my lands? Yet I am a merciful man. I will remember your old parents and your little sons, and this time I will not kill you. No, I will save death for the next time you dare to disobey me and rob again.” Then he called to his own men who surrounded the villagers and he said, “Draw out your sharp girdle knives and cut off their ears only, for a warning that they may remember what I have told them this day!”

Then the soldiers of Wang the Tiger stepped forward and they whetted their knives upon the soles of their shoes and they cut off the ears of the robbers and heaped the ears upon the ground before Wang the Tiger. And Wang the Tiger looked at the robbers, every man with two streams of his blood running down his cheeks, and he said,

“Let these ears of yours be sign of remembrance!”

Then he turned his horse and galloped away. And as he went his heart misgave him that perhaps he ought to have killed the robbers and finished them clean and so cleansed his regions, for such a death would have warned others, and his heart misgave him that perhaps he grew weak and too merciful, now as he grew old. But he comforted himself by saying to himself,

“It was for my son’s sake I saved those lives, and some day I will tell him how for his sake I did not kill an hundred and seventy-three men, and it will please him.”