Yuan looked up suddenly at the foreign voice and words There he saw a small thin white man, a little common-looking fellow in a grey cotton suit of clothes and a white sun helmet, and with a common face, not newly shaven, though the pale blue eyes were kind enough, and Yuan saw he was a foreign priest. He could not answer. This was the bitterest thing to bear, that here was a white man to see what he had seen, and know what he had known this day. He turned away and would not answer. But from his seat he saw the man get off the train and trudge through the crowd and turn towards the mud-walled city. Then Yuan remembered that other white man who had said, “If you would live as I have lived—”
And Yuan asked himself accusingly, “Why did I never see all this before? I have seen nothing until now!”
Yet it was only the beginning of what Yuan must see. For when at last he stood before his father, Wang the Tiger, he saw him as he never knew he was. There the Tiger stood, clinging to the door post of his hall waiting for his son, and all his old strength was gone, even his old petulance, and there was only an old grey man, whose long white whiskers dropped down sparsely on his chin, and whose eyes were red and filmed with age and with too much wine-drinking, so that until Yuan came near he could not see him, but must listen for his voice.
Now Yuan had seen with wonder how weedy were the courts that he came through and how few the soldiers were who stood about, a few ragged idle fellows, and how the very guard at the gate had no gun and let him come in as he would and asked no questions and gave no courteous greeting as he should to his general’s son. But Yuan was not ready to see his father look so gaunt and thin. The old Tiger stood there in an old robe of grey stuff, and it was even patched upon the elbows where his bones had worn through upon the arm of his chair, and on his feet were slippers of cloth and the heels turned under, and his sword was not in his hand now.
Then Yuan cried out, “My father!” and the old man answered trembling, “Is it really you, my son?” And they held each other’s hands, and Yuan felt tears rush to his eyes to see his father’s old face, the nose and mouth and dimmed eyes all somehow bigger than they used to be and too big in the shrunken face. It seemed to Yuan, staring at the face, that this could not be his father, not the Tiger whom he used to fear, whose frowns and black brows were once so terrible, whose sword was never far from his hand, even when he slept. Yet it was the Tiger, for when he knew it was Yuan he called out, “Bring the wine!”
There was a slow stirring and the hare-lipped trusty man, himself aged now, but still his general’s man, came forward, and he gave his greeting to his general’s son, his crooked face beaming, and he poured out wine, while the father took the son’s hand and led him in.
Now did another show himself, and yet another whom Yuan had not seen before, or thought he had not, two grave little prosperous men, one old, one young. The elder was a small, shriveled man, dressed very neatly in an old fashion of long robe of dark grey small-patterned silk, and on his upper body was a sleeved jacket of dull black silk, and on his head a little round silk cap and on it a white cord button denoting mourning for some near relative. About his ankles, too, higher than the black velvet shoes he wore, his trousers were tied with bands of white cotton cloth. Above this sombre garb his small old face peered out, smooth as though he still could not grow a beard, but very wrinkled, his eyes as shining sharp as a weasel’s eyes are.
The young man was like him except his robe was dull blue, and he wore the mourning that a son wears for his dead mother, and his eyes were not sharp, but wistful as an ape’s little hollow eyes are when it looks at human men to whom it is akin and yet not near enough to understand them or be understood. This was the other’s son.
Now as Yuan looked at them uncertainly, the elder said in his dried high voice, “I am your second uncle, nephew. I have not seen you since you were a lad, I think. This is my eldest son, your cousin.”
At this Yuan gave surprised greeting to the two, not too gladly, because they were very strange to him in their staid old-fashioned looks and ways, but still he was courteous, and more courteous than the Tiger, who paid no heed to them at all, but only sat now and stared joyfully at Yuan.
And indeed Yuan was much moved by this childlike pleasure his father had in his return. The old Tiger could not take his eyes from Yuan, and when he had stared awhile he burst into silent laughter, and rose from his seat and went to Yuan and felt his arms and his strong shoulders and laughed again and muttered, “Strong as I was at his age—aye, I remember I had such arms I could throw an eight-foot spear of iron and wield a great stone weight. In the south under that old general I used to do it of an evening to amuse my fellows. Stand up and let me see your thighs!”
Yuan stood up obediently, amused and patient, and the Tiger turned to his brother and laughed aloud and cried in some of his old vigor, “You see this son of mine? I’ll swear you have not one to match him out of all your four!”
Wang the Merchant answered nothing to this, except he smiled his little forbearing meager smile. But the younger man said patiently and carefully, “I think my two younger brothers are as large, and my next brother is larger than I, since I am smallest of them all, although the eldest.” And he blinked his mournful eyes at them as he made his report.
Now Yuan, listening, asked curiously, “How are these other cousins of mine and what do they do?”
The son of Wang the Merchant here looked at his father, but since that elder sat silent, and wore the same small smile, he took courage and answered Yuan. “It is I who work to aid my father with his rents and grain shop. Once we all did it, but the times are very evil now in these parts. The tenants have grown so lordly that they will not pay the rents they should. And the grain, too, is harvested in lesser quantities. My elder brother is your father’s, for my father gave him to my uncle. And my next brother, he would go out to see the world and he went and is in a shop in the south, an accountant, because he fingers the abacus very well, and he is prosperous, since much silver passes through his hands. My third brother is at home, and his family, and the youngest, he goes to school, for we have a school now in our town of a new sort, and we expect him to be wed as soon as it is decent, for my mother died a few months back.”
Then Yuan remembering, remembered a great blowsy lively country woman he had seen in his uncle’s house the once his father took him there, and how she made merry always, and he wondered to think she must lie still and dead while this little creeping man, his uncle, lived on and on so little changed. He asked, “How did it happen?”
Then the son looked at his father and they were both silent until the Tiger hearing what was asked answered, as if here were a thing which had to do with him, “How did it happen? Why, we have an enemy, our family has, and now he is a little wandering robber chieftain in the hills about our old village. Once I took a city from him in the fairest way, by open guile and siege, but he has not forgiven me for it. I swear he settled near our lands on purpose and he watched for my kin, I know. And this brother of mine is cautious and found out this robber hated us, and he would not go himself to take his share of crops and taxes from the tenants, but he sent his wife, she being only a woman, and the robbers caught her on her homeward way, and robbed her and cut her head off and rolled it down beside the road. I tell my brother, ‘Wait a few months now until I gather up my men again. I swear I’ll search that robber out—I swear I’ll—I swear I’ll …’ ” The Tiger’s voice dragged in weakening wrath and he put out his hand blindly, searching, and the old trusty man standing near put a wine bowl in it and said drowsily, as if from long habit, “Quiet yourself, my general. Do not be angry, lest you grow ill.” And he shifted on his tired old feet and yawned a little and stared happily at Yuan, admiring him.
Now though Wang the Merchant had said nothing during all this tale, when Yuan looked at him to speak some courteous comfort, he was surprised to see his uncle’s little old shining eyes were wet with tears, and still silent, the old man took the edge of first one sleeve and
then the other and carefully wiped each eye, and then in his spare stealthy fashion he drew his dry old hand across his nose and Yuan was so astonished he could not speak, to see this cold old man shed tears.
The son saw it, too, and with his small wistful eyes upon his father he said mournfully to Yuan, “The servant who was with her said if she had been silent and more obedient to them they would not have been so quick to kill. But she had a very swift loud tongue and all her life long she had used it as she liked, and she had a temper always quick to boil, and she shouted at the very first, ‘Shall I give you my good silver, you sons of cursed mothers?’ Yes, the servant ran as fast as his feet could take him when she cried so loudly, but when he looked back her head was off already, and we lost the whole of those rents with her for they took everything.”
Thus the son spoke in the evenest little garrulous voice, the words running out one like another in flatness, as though he had his mother’s loose tongue inside his father’s body. But he was a good son, too, who had loved his mother, and now his voice broke and he went out to the court and coughed to ease himself and wipe his eyes and mourn a little.
As for Yuan, not knowing what else to do, he rose and poured a bowl of tea for his uncle and felt himself in a dream here in this room, a stranger with these folk who were his own blood. Yes, he had a life to live they could not conceive, and their life was small as death to him. Suddenly, though why he did not know, he remembered Mary, of whom for a long time he had no thought. … Why now should she come to his mind as clearly as though a door were opened to show her there, as he had been used to see her on a windy day in spring across the sea, her fine dark hair blown about her face, her skin white and red, her eyes their steady grey? She had no place here. This place she could not know. The pictures of his country she had been used to speak of, the pictures she had made for her own mind, were only pictures. It was well, Yuan thought passionately, staring at his father and at these others, sunk back in themselves, now that the first keen edge of meeting was over,—oh, it was very well he had not loved her! He looked about the old hall. There was dust everywhere, the dust long left by a few old careless servants. Between the tiles upon the floor, the green mold grew, and there were stains upon the tiles of spilt wine and of old spittle and of ashes and of dripped greasy food. The broken lattices of shell had been mended with paper, hanging now in sheets, and even in this daylight rats ran to and fro upon the beams above. The old Tiger sat nodding, his warm wine drunk, and his jaw dropped and all his great old body slack and helpless. Above him on a nail his sword hung in its scabbard. Now for the first time Yuan saw it, although he had missed its shining nearness the first moment when he saw his father. It was still beautiful, though sheathed. The scabbard was beautiful in spite of dust in all the carven patterns on it and although the red silken tassels hung down faded and gnawed by rats.
…A h, he was very glad he had not loved that foreign woman. Let her keep her dreams of what his country was! Let her never know the truth!
A great sob rose in Yuan’s throat. … Had the old passed forever from him? He thought of the old Tiger, and of the little shriveled mean-faced man, his uncle, and his son. These, these were still his own and he was tied to them by the blood in his own veins, which he could not spill out if he would. However he might long to be free of all their kind, their blood must run in him so long as he lived.
It was very well that Yuan should know his youth was over and that he must be a man now, and look only to himself, for on that night while he lay alone in the old room where he had slept as a child and as a lad, his guards about him, and where he had sat alone and wept himself to sleep when he ran home from the school of war, the old trusty man came creeping in. Yuan had but just lain himself down to sleep, for his father had made a little feast for him that night and he had bidden his two captains in and they had eaten and drunk together for welcome to Yuan. Afterwards Yuan had let his father lean on him and taken him to his own door before he came to bed himself.
For a while, lying in his bed before he slept, he listened to what he never used to hear, the night sounds of the little town where his father had lived so long encamped. He thought to himself, “If I had been asked I would have said there were no sounds in this little town at night.” And yet there were the barking of the dogs up the street, the crying of a child, a murmur of voices not yet stilled in sleep, a solitary tolling note now and again of some temple bell, and clear and waning above it all, although not near, the crying agony of some woman’s voice seeking for the wandering soul of her child now dying. No sound was loud, for there were silent courts between him and the gate, and yet Yuan, somehow newly keen to everything because he felt himself a stranger here where once he was not strange, heard each separate sound.
Then suddenly there was the squeak of his door upon its wooden hinges and the flare of a candle, and he saw the door open and there was the old trusty man, who bent and set his candle carefully on the floor, and panting a little because his back was stiff he stood again and closed the door and thrust the bar through. Yuan waited, wondering in surprise what he had to say.
He came on his slow old feet up to Yuan’s bed, and seeing Yuan had not drawn the curtains he said, “You are not sleeping, young sir? I have something I must say.”
Then Yuan, seeing how this man’s old body bent at the knees, said kindly, “Sit, then, while you speak.” But the man knew his place and was unwilling for a while, until at last he yielded to Yuan’s kindness, and sat down on the footstool beside the bed and he began to hiss and whisper through his split lip and though his eyes were kind and honest, he was so hideous that Yuan could not bear to see him, however good he was.
Yet soon he forgot how the old man looked, in his dismay at what he heard. For out of a long, winding, broken story Yuan’s mind began to discern something more and more clearly, and at last the old man put his two old hands upon his dried old knees and whispered loudly, “So every year, little general, your father has borrowed more heavily of your uncle. First he borrowed a great sum to set you free out of that prison, little general, and then every year to keep you safe abroad he borrowed more. Well, and he let his soldiers go and let them go until now I swear he has not a hundred left to fight with. He could not go to war; his men have left him for other lords of war. They were but hirelings and when the wage is stopped, shall hirelings stay? And the handful he has left are not soldiers. They are ragged thieves and wastrels of his army who live here because he gives them food, and the townspeople hate them because they go from door to door demanding money, and having guns they must be feared. Yet they are only armed beggars. Once I told the general what they did, because he has always been so honorable, he has never let his men take more than their due for booty, and never did he let them take from people in times of peace. Well, and then he went out and roared and drew his brows down and pulled his whiskers at them, but what of that, little sir? They saw him old and shaking even while he roared, and though they pretended to be afraid, when he was gone I saw them laugh and they went straight out again to their begging and still they do as they like. And what use to tell my general more? It is better for him to have peace. And so he borrows money every month, I know, because your uncle comes here often now, and he would not if it were not something for money. And your father gets money somehow, because he has it and I know people do not give him much tax these days, and his soldiers who force what is given keep most of it, and he could not have enough if your uncle did not give it.”
But Yuan could not believe it all at once and he said in dismay, “Yet if my father has dispersed his army as much as you say he has, and he gives only food to his men now, he cannot need so much money as he did. And his father left him land, I think.”
Then the old man bent close and he whispered piercingly, “That land is all your uncle’s now, I swear—or else as good as his, for how will your father pay him what is owed? And, little general, do you think it has cost nothing for you to go to foreign countries? Yes, he
has let your own mother do with little enough, and your own two sisters have been wed to tradesmen in this little town, but every month your father has sent this money to that other lady for you.”
In this moment Yuan perceived how childish he had been all these years. Year after year he had taken it as a thing not to be doubted that his father should pay for all he had wanted. He had not been wasteful and he had not gamed or wanted many fine garments or done those things that young men sometimes do to waste their parents’ goods. But year after year his least needs had cost his father hundreds of pieces of silver. And now he thought of Ai-lan’s silken gowns and of her wedding, yes, and of the lady’s house and of her foundlings. And while Yuan knew the lady had some silver left her from her own father, whose only child she had been, so that he left her no mean sum of money, yet Yuan doubted if it could pay for all.
Then Yuan felt his heart rush out to his old father that all these years he had made no complaint, but by borrowing and contriving he had not let his son suffer for a want of silver. And Yuan said in the gravity of his new manhood, “I thank you that you have told me. Tomorrow I will see my uncle and my cousin and know what has taken place and what their hold is on my father—” and then as though this suddenly came to him as a new thought he added, “and on me!”
Through the night Yuan could not forget this thought. Again and again he woke and though he might comfort himself and remember that after all they were of one blood, and therefore debt is not really debt, yet Yuan felt a weight upon him when he thought of these two. Yes, they were his flesh and blood though he felt himself as alien from them as though his were another race. Once, pondering on this in the black loneliness of night, it came to him that here in his own childhood bed, within his father’s house, he felt as foreign as he had across the sea. It struck with a sudden bleakness, “How is it I have no home anywhere?” And all the days upon the train and all he had seen rose up to sicken him again and make him shrink away and he said suddenly aloud in a low whispering cry, “I am homeless!”