Now every day he looked where he would, and there was nothing between him and all that he could see about him. He could see straight to where the sky met earth, and he could see the little wooded hamlets here and there upon the land, in the distance to the west the wall of the town, black and serrated against the porcelain sky. Thus looking every day as far and freely as he would, and walking on the earth or riding on his horse, it came into his mind that now he knew what “country” was. Those fields, this earth, this very sky, those pale, lovely, barren hills, these were his country.
And here came a strange thing, that Yuan ceased even to ride his horse because it seemed to lift him off the land. At first he rode because he had always ridden a horse, and to ride it was to him the same as using his own feet. But now everywhere he went the farming people stared at him, and they always said to one another, if they did not know him, “Well, that is a soldier’s horse, surely, and it never carried any honest load,” and within two or three days’ time he heard the gossip of him spread and people said, “There is that son of Wang the Tiger, riding his great high horse everywhere and lording it as all his family do. Why is he here? It must be he looks upon the land and tallies crops for his father and plans some new tax on us for war.” It came to be that whenever Yuan rode by they looked sourly at him and then turned away and spat into the dust.
At first this scornful spitting made Yuan angry and astonished, for it was new to him to be so treated, who had never feared anyone except his father, and who had been used to servants hurrying to his bidding. But after a time he fell to thinking why it was, and how these people had been so oppressed, for so he had learned in the school of war, and then he turned good-humored again and let them spit to ease themselves.
At last he even left his horse tied to the willow tree and walked and although it came a little hardly to him at first to use his own legs, yet in a day or two he was used to it. He put aside his usual leathern shoes and wore the straw sandals that the farmers wore, and he liked to feel beneath his feet the solid earth of path and roads, dry with the months of winter sunshine. He liked to pass a man and meet his stare as though he were any stranger and not a war lord’s son to be cursed and feared.
In those few days Yuan learned to love his country as he never had. And being so free and lonely, his verses rose shaped and shining and ready to be written down. He had scarcely even to search out a word but only to write down what was in him. There was no book or paper in the earthen house, and only an old pen that once his grandfather had bought, perhaps, to set his mark on some purchase deed for land. Yet still the pen could be used, and with it and a broken bit of dried ink block he found Yuan brushed his verses on the whitewashed walls in the middle room, while the old tenant stared, admiring yet half fearful of the magic written unknown words. And now Yuan wrote new verses, not only of willows brushing silent pools, or of floating clouds and silver rains and falling flower petals. The new verses welled up from some deeper place within him, and they were not so smoothly written, for he told of his country and his new love of it. Where once his verses were pretty, empty shapes, like lovely bubbles on the surface of his mind, now they were not so pretty, but were filled more full of some meaning which he struggled with, not understanding wholly, coming with rougher rhythm and uneven music.
Thus the days passed, and Yuan lived alone with his great swelling thoughts. What his future might be he did not know. No clear form of anything came to his mind to make his future plain. He was content for this time to breathe in the hard bright beauty of this northern land, glittering in the cloudless sun, its very light seeming blue, it poured down from so blue a sky. He listened to the talk and laughter of the people in the little hamlet streets; he mingled with the men who sat at wayside inns, listening, seldom speaking, as one listens to a language scarcely understood, but very sweet-sounding to the ear and heart; he rested in the peace where there was no talk of war, but only of the village gossip, what son was born, what land was sold or bought and what its price, what man or maid was to be wed, what seed due to be sown, and such good common things.
His pleasure in all this grew greater every day, and when it grew too great, a verse came shaped into his mind, and he wrote it down also, and so was eased awhile, although here was a thing so strange it made him wonder at himself even, that while he found pleasure in these days, his verses came up out of him always not merry but tinged with deep melancholy, as though there were in him some hidden well of sadness, and he did not know why this was.
Yet how could he live on like this, the Tiger’s only son? Everywhere the country folk were saying, “There is a strange tall black young man who wanders here and there like one witless. They say he is the son of Wang the Tiger, and nephew to Wang the Merchant. But how can son of men as great as these wander like this alone? He lives in that old earthen house of Wang Lung, and it must be he is out of his mind.”
This rumor reached even to the ears of Wang the Merchant in the town and he heard it from an old chief clerk in his counting house, and he said sharply, “Of course it is no brother’s son of mine, for I have seen and heard nothing of him. And is it likely true that my brother would let free his precious only son in such a way? I will send out a serving man tomorrow and see who it is who lives in my father’s tenant house. I gave no one such a leave to live there for my brother.” And secretly he feared the sojourner might be some pretending, robber spy.
But the tomorrow never came, for those at the Tiger’s camp had heard the rumor, too. That day Wang Yuan rose as his habit was now and even as he stood in the doorway eating bread and sipping tea, and looking out across the land and dreaming, he saw in the distance a chair borne upon men’s shoulders and then another and about them walked a guard of soldiers, and he knew the soldiers for his father’s by their garb. He went inside the door then, suddenly not able to eat or drink any more, and he put the food down on the table and stood waiting, and to himself he thought most bitterly, “It is my father, I suppose—and what shall we say to each other?” And he would have liked to run away across the fields like any child, except he knew this meeting must come upon some day or other, and he could not run away forever. So he waited very troubled, and forcing back his old childish fear, and he could eat no more while he waited.
But when the chairs drew near and were set down, there came out from them not his father nor any man at all, but two women; one was his mother, and the other was her serving woman.
Now could Yuan be astonished indeed, for he seldom saw his mother, and he never knew her to have left her house before, and so he went out slowly to make his greeting, wondering what this meant. She came towards him, leaning on her servant’s arm, a white-haired woman in a decent garb of black, her teeth all gone so that her cheeks were sunken. But still there was good ruddiness upon her cheeks, and if the look upon her face was simple and a little silly, even, yet it was kind, too. When she saw her son she cried out in a plain, country way, for she had been a village maiden in her youth, “Son, your father sent me to say that he is ill and near to death. He says you are to have what you will if only you will come at once before he dies. He says to say to you he is not angry, and therefore only come.”
This she said loudly and for all to hear, and in truth even by now the villagers were clustering to see and hear a new thing. But Yuan saw none of them, he was so confused by what he heard. He had strengthened himself through all these days not to leave this house against his will, but how could he refuse his father if he were truly dying? Yet was it true? Then he remembered how his father’s hands had shaken when he stretched them out in eagerness to take the comfort of the wine, and he feared it might be true, and a son ought not to refuse a father anything.
Now the serving woman, seeing his doubt, felt it her duty to aid her mistress, and she cried loudly, too, looking here and there upon the villagers to mark her own importance, “Ah, my little general, it is true! We are all half-crazed and all the doctors, too! The old general lies at the end of his
life, and if you would see him living, you must go quickly to him. I swear he has not long to live—if he has, then may I die myself!” And all the villagers listened greedily to this and looked at each other meaningfully to hear the Tiger was so near his end.
But still Yuan doubted these two women, the more because he felt in them some hidden secret eagerness to force him home, and when the serving woman saw his continuing doubt, she threw herself upon the ground before him and cracked her head upon the hard-beaten threshing floor, and she bellowed in loud, feigned weeping, “See your mother, little general—see even me, a slave—how we beseech you—”
When she had done this a time or two, she rose and dusted off her grey cotton coat and cast a haughty stare about upon the crowded gaping villagers. Her duty now was done, and she stood to one side, proud servant of a high proud family, and so above these common folk.
But Yuan paid no heed to her. He turned to his mother and he knew he must do his duty, however he might hate it, and he asked her to come in and seat herself and this she did, while the crowd followed after and edged into the door to see and hear. But she did not heed them, being used to common folk who always gape to see their betters.
She looked about the middle room, wondering, and said, “It is the first time I was ever in this house. I used in childhood to hear great stories of it and how Wang Lung grew rich and bought a tea house girl and how she ruled him for a while. Yes, the greatest tales of how she looked and what she ate and wore were told from mouth to mouth in this whole countryside, although it was a thing of the past, even then, for he was old when I was but a child. I mind now it was said Wang Lung even sold a piece of land to buy a ruby ring for her. But afterward he bought it back again. I saw her only once, upon my marriage day, and—my mother!—how fat and hideous she grew before she died at last! Eh—”
She laughed toothlessly and looked about her amiably, and Yuan, seeing how placidly and honestly she spoke, took heart to know the truth, and so he asked her plainly, “Mother, is my father really ill?”
This recalled her to her purpose and she answered, hissing through her toothless gums as she must do when she talked, “He is ill, my son. I do not know how ill, but he sits there, for he will not go to bed, and he drinks and drinks and will not eat until he is yellow as a melon. I swear I never saw such yellowness. And no one dares go near him to say a single word, for he roars and curses beyond even what he ever did. He cannot live if he will not eat, be sure.”
“Aye, aye, it’s true—he cannot live if he will not eat,” the serving woman echoed. She stood beside her mistress’s chair, and shook her head and took a melancholy pleasure in her words, and then the two women sighed together and looked grave and watched Yuan secretly.
Then when he had thought a little while in great impatience Yuan said, for he knew he must go if it were true his father was so ill, although he doubted still and thought to himself that what his father said was true and women all were fools, “I will go then. Rest here a day or two, my mother, before you come back, for you must be weary.”
Then he made sure for her comfort, and saw her in the quiet room which seemed now his own so that he left it sadly, and when she had eaten, he put from him the memory of the pleasant, lovely days and mounting on his horse once more, he turned his face to the north and to his father and again he wondered at these two women, for they seemed too cheerful at his going, more cheerful than they should be if the lord of the house lay ill.
Behind him went a score or so of his father’s soldiers. Once hearing them guffaw together at some coarseness he could not bear them any more, and he turned on them in anger, hating the familiar clatter of them at his horse’s heels. But when he asked them fiercely why they followed him, they answered sturdily, “Sir, your father’s trusty man bade us follow you lest some enemy take this chance and seize you for a ransom or even kill you. There are many robbers through the countryside, and you are an only, precious son.”
And Yuan answered nothing. He groaned and turned his face northwards steadily. What foolishness had made him think of freedom? He was his father’s only son, most hopelessly his father’s only son.
And of the villagers and country folk who watched him passing there was not one who was not rejoiced to see him go away again, because they did not understand him or believe in him at all, and Yuan could see their great content that he must go, and this sight remained a darkness in the pleasure of those free days.
So Yuan rode against his will to his father’s gates, the guard behind him. They did not leave him the whole way and he soon perceived they guarded him not so much from robbers as from himself, lest he escape them somewhere. It was on his lips a score of times to cry at them, “You need not fear me—I will not run from my own father—I come to him of my own will!”
But he said nothing. He looked at them in scorn and silence and would not speak to them, but rode on as fast as he could, taking a haughty pleasure in his quick horse that kept so easily before their common ones that they must press their poor beasts on and on. Yet he knew himself a prisoner, however he might go. No verse came to him now; he scarcely saw the lovely land.
At evening of the second day of this forced riding he reached his father’s threshold. He leaped from his horse and suddenly weary to his very soul he went slowly towards the room in which his father commonly slept, not heeding all the secret stares of soldiers and of serving men, and answering no greeting.
But his father was not in his bed, although it was night by now, and a lounging guard said when Yuan asked him, “The general is in his hall.”
Then Yuan felt some anger, and he thought to himself that after all his father was not very ill, and it was only a ruse to win him home. He nursed his anger at the ruse, so that he would not fear his father, and when he remembered the pleasant lonely days upon the land, he could keep his anger lively against his father. Yet when he entered the hall and saw the Tiger, Yuan forgot some of his anger, for eye could see here was no ruse. His father sat in his old chair, the tiger skin flung across the carved back of it, and before him was the glowing brazier full of coals. He was wrapped in his shaggy sheepskin robe, and on his head was set his high fur hat, but still he looked as cold as death. His skin was yellow as old leather, and his eyes burned dry and black and sunken, and the unshaved hair upon his face was grey and harsh. He looked up when his son came in, and then down again into the coals and gave no greeting.
Then Yuan came forward and bowed before his father, saying, “They told me you were ill, my father, so I came.”
But Wang the Tiger muttered, “I am not ill. It is woman’s talk.” And he would not look at his son.
Then Yuan asked, “Did you not send for me because you were ill?” And Wang the Tiger muttered again, “I did not send for you. They asked me where you were, and I said, ‘Let him stay where he is.’ ” He looked down steadfastly into the coals and stretched his hands above their shimmering heat.
Now these words might have angered anyone and especially a young man in these days when parents are not honored, and Yuan might easily have hardened himself more and gone away again to do as he liked in his new willfulness, except he saw his father’s two hands stretched out, pale and dry as old men’s hands are, and trembling and seeking for some warmth somewhere, and he could not say a word of anger. It came to him now, as the moment must come to any gentle-hearted son, that his father in his loneliness was grown a little child again, and one to be dealt with as a child, with tenderness and no anger, in whatever petulance he spoke. This weakness in his father struck at the roots of Yuan’s anger, so that he felt unusual tears come to his eyes, and if he had dared he would have put his hand out to touch his father except some strange natural shame restrained him. Therefore he only sat down sidewise on a chair nearby and gazing at his father, waited silently and even patiently for what he might say next.
But there was this freedom that the moment gave him. He knew his fear of his father was forever gone. Never more would he be afraid
of this old man’s roarings and his darkening looks and his black brows drawn down and all the tricks the Tiger used to make himself fearful. For Yuan saw the truth, that these tricks were only weapons his father used; though he had not known it he had used them as a shield, or as men will take a sword and brandish it and never mean to bring it down on any flesh. So those tricks had covered the Tiger’s heart, which never had been hard enough nor cruel enough nor merry enough to make of him a truly great lord of war. In this moment and its clearness Yuan looked upon his father and he began to love him fearlessly.
But Wang the Tiger, not knowing anything of this change in his son, sat brooding on, silent and seeming to forget his son was there. He sat long without moving and at last Yuan, seeing how ill his father’s color was and how his flesh had dropped from him these last few days, so that the bones of his face stood out like rocks, said gently, “And would it not be better if you went to bed, my father?”
When he heard his son’s voice again, Wang the Tiger looked up slowly as a sick man will, and he fixed his gaunt eyes upon his son and stared at him awhile and after another while he said hoarsely and very slowly, word for word, “For your sake once I did not kill an hundred and seventy-three men who deserved to die!” He lifted his right hand as though he would have held it over his mouth in a way he had, but the hand dropped of its own weight, and he let it hang and he said to his son again, still staring at him, “It is true. I did not kill them for your sake.”
“I am glad, my father,” said Yuan, moved not so much by the living men, although he was glad to know they lived, as by the childish longing he discerned in his father to please him. “I hate to see men killed, my father,” he said.