Sons

  As for Wang the Tiger, throughout the day of his wedding he moved in a dream and he scarcely knew what he did except that the hours of the day moved so slowly that he did not know what to do with himself. It seemed to him that every breath he drew lasted an hour and that the sun would never crawl up the sky to noon, and when it had, that it would stay forever. He could not be merry as men are at their weddings, for he had never been merry, and now he sat as silent as ever, and there was not one to joke at his expense. He thirsted exceedingly all that day, and he drank much wine, but he could eat nothing, for he was as full as though he had eaten a mighty meal.

  But into the courts of feasting men and women and the crowds of poor and ragged and the dogs from the streets came in by scores to feast and to eat and to pick the bones that were left, and in his own room Wang the Tiger sat silent and half smiling as in a dream and so the day wore on at last to night.

  Then when the women had prepared the bride for the bed he went into her room and she was there. It was the first woman he had ever known. Yes, this was a curious, unheard-of thing, that a man could come to be more than thirty years old and be a soldier and a runaway from his father’s house since he was eighteen, and never had he gone near a woman, so sealed his heart had been.

  But that fountain was flowing free, now, and naught could ever seal it again, and seeing this woman sitting there on the bed, he drew his breath in sharply, and she hearing it, lifted her eyes and looked at him fully.

  So he went to her and he found her silent but passionate and frank upon her marriage bed, and he loved her mightily from that hour, and since he had known no other, she seemed to him faultless.

  Once in the middle of the night he turned to her and he said in a husky whisper,

  “I do not even know who you are.”

  And she answered calmly, “What does it matter except that I am here? But some time I will tell you.”

  And he let it pass, content for the time, for they were neither of them usual folk, and both their lives were not such as are commonly lived.

  But the trusty men did not let Wang the Tiger have more than the night, and the next morning at dawn they waited for him, and they saw him come out of his door, calm and refreshed from his marriage chamber. Then the harelipped man said, bowing,

  “Sir, and honored, we did not tell you yesterday since it was a day of joy, but we have heard rumors from the north and the provincial ruler has heard that you have seized the government and comes down against you.”

  And the Hawk said in his turn, “I heard it from a beggar who came from that way and he said he passed ten thousand men upon the way marching down upon us.”

  And the Pig Butcher added his tale, stammering through his thick lips in his haste to speak as he had been told,

  “I—I also heard it—when I went out to the market to see how they stick their pigs in this city and a butcher told me.”

  But Wang the Tiger was all softened and at ease and for the first time he could not bring himself to think of war and he smiled in his slight way and said,

  “I can trust my men, and let them come.” And he sat down to drink a little tea before he ate and he sat at a table beside a window and it was broad day and a thought came to him suddenly, and it was this, that there is a night at the end of every day, and he seemed to know it for the first time, now, so meaningless had all other nights of his life been except this one night.

  But there was one who heard what his trusty men said, and she stood by the curtain and looked through a crack of it, and she saw they were dismayed to see their leader sunk in some pleasing thought of his own. When Wang the Tiger rose and went out of the room to go to the one where food was eaten, she called clearly to the harelipped man and she said,

  “Tell me all you have heard.”

  He was very loath to talk to a woman of what was none of her affair, and he muttered and made as if he had nothing to tell until she said imperiously,

  “Do not play the fool with me, who have seen blood and fighting and battle and retreat these five years since I was grown! Tell me!”

  Then wondering and abashed before her bold eyes fixed on his and not dropped as the eyes of women usually are, especially when they are newly wed and should be full of shame, he told her as though she had been a man what they all feared and how they were in danger because more men marched against them than they had, and many of their men were untried in their loyalty if a battle came. She sent him away quickly then saying he must beg Wang the Tiger to come to her.

  He came as he had never come to any summons, smiling more softly than anyone had ever seen him smile. She sat down upon the bed and he sat down beside her and took up the end of her sleeve and fingered it and he was more abashed in her presence than she was in his and he kept his eyes down, smiling.

  But she began to speak swiftly in her clear, somewhat piercing voice,

  “I am not a woman such as will stand in your way if there is a battle to be fought and they tell me an army marches against you.”

  “Who told you?” he answered. “I will not trouble myself for three days. I have given myself three days.”

  “But if they come nearer in three days?”

  “An army cannot come two hundred miles in three days.”

  “How can you know what day they started?”

  “The tale could not have reached the provincial seat in so short a time.”

  “It could have!” she said swiftly.

  Now here was a strange thing. These two, a man and a woman, could sit and talk of something far from love and yet Wang the Tiger was as knit to her as he had been in the night. He was amazed that a woman could talk like this for he had never talked with one before and he had always thought them pretty children in tall bodies, and one reason why he feared them was because he did not know what they knew nor what to say to them. He was so made that even with a woman paid for he could not rush to her as a common soldier does, and half his diffidence with women was because he feared the speech he must make with them. But here he sat and talked with this woman as easily as though she were a man and he listened to her when she said on,

  “You have fewer men than the provincial army has, and when a warrior finds his army smaller than his enemy’s then he must use guile.”

  At this he made his silent laugh and said in his gruff way,

  “Well I know that, or I would not have had you for mine now.”

  She dropped her eyes quickly at this as though to veil something that might show itself in them and she bit the edge of her lower lip and she answered,

  “The simplest guile is to kill a man, but one must catch him first. The same simple guile will not do now.”

  Then Wang the Tiger answered with pride, “I will pit my men against thrice their number of state soldiers. I have trained them and taught them this whole winter and hardened them with boxing and running and fencing and with all feints of war and none of them is afraid to die. Moreover, it is known what state soldiers are, and they will always turn to the strongest side, and doubtless the soldiers of this province are not better paid than any others like them.”

  Then she said with some impatience, and she drew her sleeve out of his fingers as she spoke,

  “Still you have no plan! Hear me—I have a plan made while we talked. There is the old magistrate you have guarded in his court. Use him as a hostage of a kind.”

  Now she spoke so earnestly and soberly that Wang the Tiger listened to her, yet was amazed that he did, for he was not a man who often took counsel with others, thinking himself sufficient for anything. But he listened and she said,

  “Take your soldiers out and take him also and force him and tell him what he is to say, that he shall say what you command. Let him go out to meet the provincial general with a trusty man on either side of him who will hear what he says, and if he does not say what you have told him, let them have their swords ready and plunge them into his bowels, and that shall be a sign for battle. But he has a gall no larger than
a hen’s. He will say what he is told, and let him say that nothing has been done without his consent, that the rumor of a rebellion is only because his own old general rebelled and if it had not been for you who delivered him the seals of state would have been stolen and his own life gone.”

  Now this seemed excellent good guile to Wang the Tiger, and he listened with his eyes fastened on her face as she spoke. He saw the whole plan there before him and he rose and laughed noiselessly to think what she was and he went out to do what she had said, and she came close behind him. He commanded a trusty man to go and fetch the old magistrate out and bring him to the hall of audience. Then the woman had a fancy and it was that they would go and sit in the audience room, he and she together, and let the old magistrate come before them, and Wang the Tiger was willing because they must frighten the old man thoroughly. So they sat themselves down on the dais, Wang the Tiger in a carven chair, and the woman beside him in another chair.

  Soon the old magistrate came tottering in between two soldiers, and he came out trembling and his robe thrown about him anyhow. He looked half dazed about the hall, and he saw not one face he knew. No, even those servants of his who had returned looked away when he came in and found this excuse and that to go away on some other business. There were only the faces of soldiers about the walls of the hall, and every man had his gun and every man was loyal to Wang the Tiger. Then he looked up, his old lips trembling and blue, his mouth open, and he peered up and there sat Wang the Tiger with his two brows drawn down, fierce and murderous to see, and beside him a strange woman whom the old magistrate had never seen or heard of and he could not think where such an one as she had come from. He stood trembling and timid and ready to die because such an end to his life had come to him as this, who was a man of peace and had been a Confucian scholar in his day.

  Then Wang the Tiger shouted in his rough and bitter way, with little courtesy,

  “You are in my hand now and you must follow my commands if you would live on here! We march against the army of the province tomorrow, and you are to go with us, and when we meet the army you are to go first with my two trusty men and meet the general who comes against me. Tell him that you have chosen me your lord of war and that I saved you from a rebellion in your own courts and I stay here by your choice. My two trusty men will be there to hear all you say; if one word goes wrong it is your end and your last word. But if you speak well and as I tell you, you may return here and you may take your old place again upon this dais, and I will save your face for you and it need not be known whose is the power here in these courts, for I have no mind to be a petty magistrate, nor will I have another here in your place, so long as you do what I command.”

  What then could the weak old man do but give his promise and he said, groaning,

  “I am caught on the end of your spear. Let it be as you say. I am an old man and I have no son, and what does my life matter to me?”

  And he turned and went away shuffling and groaning as he went to his court where his old wife was, who never came out at all. It was true he had no sons, for the two children she had given him died before they could speak.

  Now whether the thing could have been done as Wang the Tiger planned or not none knows, but again his destiny helped him. It was now full spring and over the land the willows budded again and the peach trees burst into swift bloom, and while farmers stripped off their winter coats and worked bare backed in the fields again, rejoicing in the mild winds and the warm gentle sun upon their clogged flesh, the lords of war awoke also, and the restlessness of spring filled the countryside. And the lords of war awoke quarrelsome and full of lust of war against each other and old troubles were burnished and made new and old differences sharpened, and every man grew ambitious to achieve some new place for himself while the fresh spring lasted.

  Now the chief seat of government of the nation at this time was in the hands of a weak, unready man, and there were many lords of war who cast longing eyes at that seat and thought how easy it would be to seize it. Many counted over such as stood in the way and some banded together and consulted as to how they could take the power of the nation and unseat this unstable and ignorant man whom others had put there, and how they could place their own choice there to serve their own purpose.

  Among these lords of war Wang the Tiger was still one of the very least and he was scarcely known among the great ones except as when men of battle gossip among themselves at some meeting or feast, and one might say,

  “Did you hear of the captain who split himself off from his old general and has set himself up in such and such a province? He is a good brave, it is said, and he is called the Tiger because of his angers and fierceness and his two black brows.”

  Thus the chief lord of war in the province where Wang the Tiger now was had heard of him and he had heard how Wang the Tiger had routed the Leopard and had approved the deed. Now this chief lord was one of the great lords of war of the nation and he was one of those who had it in his mind to unseat the weak ruler if he could, and if he could not put himself on the seat at least to put his man there, so that the revenues of the nation would come to his own hands.

  During this spring, therefore, when restlessness rose everywhere, strange flowers of ambitions blossomed. There were proclamations pasted on city gates and on walls and all such places where people pass, and these proclamations were sent out by the lord of war of that province. He said that since the ruler was so evil and the people greatly oppressed, he could not endure such crimes as these before heaven. Although he was weak and witless, yet must he come forth to save the people. Having so written, he prepared for war.

  As for the people, since few of them could either read or write, they did not know this their savior, but they groaned aloud because fresh taxes were put upon their lands and upon their harvests and upon their carts and in the towns upon shops and goods. If they groaned aloud or complained, there were those minions of the lord of war who heard them and cried out,

  “How ungrateful a people are you, who will not pay even for your own salvation! And who else should pay for the soldiers who are to fight for you and make you safe?”

  So the people paid what they must, however unwillingly, fearing if they did not either the wrath of the lord they had or of a new lord who might come in and conquer them and devour them afresh, being rapacious with his victory.

  Having determined on this war, therefore, the lord of the province was eager to marshal to him every small captain and general, so when he heard of the rebellion Wang the Tiger had made, he said to the civil ruler of the province,

  “Do not bear too heavily down upon that little new general whose name is Wang the Tiger, because I hear he is a good angry fierce fellow and I want such as he is under my ensign. This whole nation will divide itself, perhaps this spring, and if not this year then next or next, and the lords of the north will declare against the lords of the south. Let this man be treated gently then.”

  Now although it is said that lords of war should be subservient in a nation to the civil governors of the people, it is a thing known and proved that the power goes always to the armed man and the man with weapons, and how can a weaponless man, even though he has the right, oppose a man of war in the same region with him, who has soldiers to his command?

  Thus it was that destiny helped Wang the Tiger in that spring. For when the armies of state came marching against him, Wang the Tiger led his men out and he sent the old magistrate ahead in his sedan and he ambushed many good strong men near in case of treachery. When they came to a meeting place the old magistrate came out of his sedan and stumbling through the dust of the country road, he went, dressed in his magistrate’s robes, and leaning upon the two trusty men. The general who had been sent from the state came to meet him, and after the rites of courtesy had been observed, the old man said in his faltering way,

  “You have it wrongly, my lord. This Wang the Tiger is no robber but my own captain and my new young general who protects my court and he
saved me from a rebellion in my own retinue.”

  Now although the general did not believe this, having heard the truth from his spies, and although no one believed it, still he had his orders that Wang the Tiger was not to be offended and that he was not to lose a man in a brawl so little as this when every gun was needed for the greater war. When he heard what the old magistrate said, therefore, he only rebuked him slightly saying,

  “You should have sent word of this before because we have been at an expense to bring men to punish what I thought was a rebel. There shall be a fine imposed on you to pay for the expense of an idle errand and it is ten thousand pieces of silver.”

  When Wang the Tiger heard that this was all he exulted very much and he led his men back in triumph again. And he imposed in his turn a tax beyond what was usual upon all the salt in that place and in less than twice thirty days he had the ten thousand pieces and some over, for that place had much salt and it was even sent out to other places and some said to other countries, too.

  When this was over Wang the Tiger was more strong than ever in his power and he had not lost a man, either. It seemed to him that for this honor was due to his woman and he honored her for her wisdom.

  Yet he still did not know who or what she was. Passion was still his chief pastime with her, but he wondered sometimes what her story was. Yet if he asked her she always put him off, saying,

  “It is a long tale, and I will tell you some day in a winter when there can be no war. But now it is spring and time for battle and for enlarging yourself, and not for idle talk.”

  And she put him off restlessly, her eyes bright and hard.

  Then Wang the Tiger knew the woman was right, for over all the country the news came winged that there was to be such a war that spring among the lords of war as had not been in ten years of wars, and the people were dismayed, not knowing from what point the war would strike them, hearing of it coming here or coming there. Yet there was the land to till and they tilled it, and in the cities the merchants had their shops and men must live and children be fed. So the people went on about their lives, and if they groaned at a coming terror, they did their work while they waited to see what would happen to them.