But his learned wife slept lightly always and she heard the cry and rose and came in. She had some slight knowledge of old medicines from her father, who was a physician, and now she drew aside the curtain and the light of earliest dawn fell upon Lotus’s frightful face. Then the learned woman cried out, aghast,
“It is the old lady’s end come on her if we cannot purge her of her wines and meats!”
She called for hot water and for ginger and for all the medicines she knew and she tried them all. But it was no use, for Lotus was deaf to all calls and entreaties now, and her teeth were so locked that even when they forced her blackened lips apart, her teeth were locked inside. It was the strangest thing that in an old body like this her teeth should still be sound and white and good, and they lost her her life now, for if there had been a hole somewhere or a gap where a tooth was gone, they would have poured the medicine in somehow, and Cuckoo could even have taken a mouthful and spurted it in with her own lips. But the sound whole teeth were fast and locked.
So Lotus lay breathing and snorting through half the next day, and suddenly, without ever knowing this was her end, she died. The purple of her face faded away and she turned as pale and as yellow as old wax. Thus did the feasting time end in this death.
Then the two elder brothers saw to the making of her coffin, but they had to let her lie a day or so, for the coffin had to be built twice as big as common, and there was none to be found made ready that was broad enough.
And while they waited Cuckoo truly mourned this creature she had tended all these years. Yes, she truly mourned her, even though she went about and collected all she could of the things that were Lotus’s still, opening this box and that and taking all of any value, and she sent her stores out secretly through a hidden back gate, so that at last when Lotus was put into her coffin those who served her marvelled that she had scarcely a coat fit to be buried in and they wondered what she had done with the good sum of silver she had as Wang Lung’s widow, seeing she had not gamed it away of late years. Yet for all her thieving Cuckoo mourned for Lotus, and she wiped a few scanty tears away, which if they were few were the only tears she had ever shed for anyone, and when the coffin was filled with lime, for Lotus had begun to stink very soon, and when the lid was sealed down and it was carried out the gate to the temple where it was to lie until a day of burial was chosen, Cuckoo walked after the coffin and hurried her old feet to keep in sight of it until it was put into the empty room of the temple among many other coffins already there. Then she turned away and went to some place of her own she had somewhere, and came no more to the house of Wang, and she mourned Lotus truly and as truly as she was able.
Before the ten allotted days were past Wang the Tiger was weary of his brothers and their sons and the hour of close kinship they had felt in the festival was gone. But he sat the days out and he watched the coming and going of his brothers’ sons as he went to this house and to that sometimes and it seemed to him that these sons were but poor weak fellows and promised no great good. The two younger sons of Wang the Merchant looked no higher than to be clerks and they had no ambition except to idle over a counter and laugh and gossip with the other clerks if their father was not by to see them at it, and even the younger one who was but twelve years old was apprenticed in a shop and spent his every moment that he dared in tossing pennies with the urchins on the street who gathered at the shop door to wait for him, and because he was the master’s son none dared to say anything against him nor to refuse him a handful of pennies if he clamored for them out of the shop’s till, although they all kept a sharp eye out to see if the lad’s father came so that he might run back to his place while Wang the Merchant passed. And Wang the Tiger saw that this brother of his was so engrossed in his money making that he never saw his sons at all, nor thought of how they would one day spend as eagerly what he so eagerly gathered together, nor that they only endured their clerking until he died and left them free so that they need not work.
And Wang the Tiger saw the sons of his elder brother, how finicking and dandyish they were, and how they must have everything that touched them soft and fine, cool silk in summer, and warm soft furs in winter. Nor would they eat well and robustly as young men ought to do, but they dallied with their foot and complained of this because it was too sweet and of that because it was too sour and salt, and they pushed one bowl after another away from them, and the slaves were kept hurrying hither and thither for them.
All this Wang the Tiger saw with anger that it was so. One night he walked alone in the court that had been his father’s and he heard the sound of a woman’s giggling laugh. Suddenly a little girl, who was child of some servant or other, ran past the round gate of his court, and she was frightened and breathless and when she saw Wang the Tiger there she stooped to scuttle past him. But he laid hold of her little arm suddenly and shouted at her,
“What woman laughed?”
The child shrank away terrified at his glittering eyes, but he had fast hold of her and she could not twist herself free, and she cast down her eyes and stammered,
“The young lord took my sister aside.”
Then Wang the Tiger asked sternly,
“Where?”
The child pointed to the back of the next court to an empty room that Lotus had used as a granary, but now it was empty and locked loosely with a great hasp. Then Wang the Tiger dropped the child’s arm and she ran like a rabbit, but he strode to that place where she pointed and he saw the hasp was wide enough so that the doors stood apart from each other nearly a foot, and a slender young body could easily pass through. He stood there in the night and listened, and he heard a woman’s laughter, tittering and giggling, and he heard some voice whisper words he could not catch but he heard them come hot and breathless from the man’s throat. Then his old sickness against passion rose in him and he was about to beat upon that door except that he stayed himself in the act and he thought with scorn,
“What business is it of mine that there is still such a thing in this same house?”
And he went back weary and sickened to his court. But some strange power even in his disgust made him restless and he walked about the court and while he waited the moon rose late. Soon out of that inner empty room he saw a young slave slip between the hasped doors and she smoothed her hair and he saw her smiling there in the light of the moon and she glanced about her swiftly and went swiftly and soundlessly in her cloth shoes across the tiled empty court which had been Lotus’s. Only once she stopped under the pomegranate tree and it was to fasten her loosened girdle.
And after a time, and all this time Wang the Tiger had stood motionless, his heart throbbing with some sort of disgust that was half sick and half sweet, he saw a young man come sauntering by and he sauntered as though he were out to see the night and nothing more. Then Wang the Tiger shouted suddenly,
“Who is it?”
There answered a very pleasant voice, idle and light,
“It is I, Uncle!”
Wang the Tiger saw it was indeed his elder brother’s eldest son, and some gorge rose in Wang the Tiger’s heart and he could have sprung upon the young man because he told himself he hated lewdness so bitterly, and most of all he hated it in his own blood and he could not bear it. But he held his hands hard to his sides, for well he knew one cannot kill a brother’s son and well he knew his own temper that if he let it come up he could not stop it where he would. So he only gave a great snort and he turned blindly away into his room and he grunted to himself,
“I must get me out of these courts where one of my brothers is a miser and the other a rake! I cannot breathe this air, for I am a man of freedom and of battle and I cannot keep my angers bottled in me as men must who live like this with women in courts!” And he wished suddenly with some strange desire that there was a need for him to kill someone and shed blood in a cause so that he could free his heart of a charge it had which he could not understand.
Then to calm himself he forced his thoughts to his li
ttle son and he crept into the room where the child slept in his mother’s bed, and he looked down upon the child. The woman slept heavily as country women will and her mouth was open and her breath came out very foul so that even as he bent over his little son Wang the Tiger was fain to cover his nostrils under his hand. But the child slept serene and still, and looking at his quiet face grave in sleep, Wang the Tiger swore that his son should not be like any of these. No, this boy should be hardened from his youth up and reared to be a great soldier and he should be taught every sort of skill and he should be made into a man.
On the very next day, therefore, Wang the Tiger took his two wives and his children and all those who had come with him and they made their farewells, after they had feasted together with their kinsman. But in spite of the farewell feasting it seemed to Wang the Tiger that he was the less near to his two brothers, after all, for this visit, and when he saw his elder brother, sleepy and peaceful and sunken in his flesh, and how his heavy eyes never lightened except at some lewdness, and when he saw his second brother, and how his face grew more narrow and his eyes more secret as his age came, it seemed to him they were like men who were blind and deaf and dumb because they did not see what they were or what they had made their sons.
But he said nothing. He sat glowering and silent and he dwelt with a mighty pride upon the thought of his own son, and the man into which he would shape him.
So they parted, and on the surface all was smooth and courteous and they bowed deeply to each other and the elder brothers and their ladies and serving men and maids came out to the street and they called a hundred good wishes. But Wang the Tiger said to himself that he would not soon come back to his father’s house.
With the greatest content, therefore, did Wang the Tiger return to his own lands and the lands seemed the best he had ever seen and the people the sturdiest and best and his house was home, and all his men welcomed him and they fired firecrackers at his coming and there were smiles of welcome everywhere when he swung himself down from his red horse and a score of soldiers idling about the courts leaped forward to catch the bridle as he tossed it aside, and it pleased Wang the Tiger to see them do it.
He set himself therefore as the spring widened, and everywhere spread into early summer, to round his men afresh and train them again day after day. He sent out his spies again and he sent out men to see how his newly taken lands were, and he sent his trusty men everywhere to bring him revenues and he sent guards fully armed to bring the treasure to him safely, for in these days it was far more than one man could carry in a sack upon his shoulders as once he had.
But in the evenings when the day was over and he sat in his court alone in the warm spring night, at such times when there are many men whose hearts grow wayward and yearn for some love or other beside what they have tried, Wang the Tiger yearned after his son. Then he had the child brought to him continually, although he did not know how to play with any child, not even his son. He commanded the nurse to seat herself where he could see the child, and he sat and stared at every movement the boy made and at every transient look that nickered across his face. When the boy learned to walk Wang the Tiger could scarcely contain himself for pleasure and when he was alone at night and no one to see him in the courts he took the girdle that the nurse passed around the child’s waist and he held it and walked round and round while the boy staggered and panted in the loop of the girdle.
If any had asked Wang the Tiger what he thought while he stared at his son, he would have been in the greatest confusion, for he did not know himself. Only he felt swelling up in him great dreams of power and glory and sometimes out of his fullness he pondered on how in these times a man could rise to any power and place if he had might enough and could make men afraid of him, for there was no emperor and no dynasty in these times, and anyone might struggle and shape events if he would. And feeling this in himself Wang the Tiger would mutter into his beard,
“And such a man am I!”
Now there came a strange thing out of this love Wang the Tiger had for his son and it was that when Wang the Tiger’s learned wife heard how he had his son brought to him every day, she dressed her daughter in bright new garments one day and she brought her in all fresh and pink and she had put little silver bracelets upon the child’s wrists and tied her black hair with pink bits of yarn, and she forced the child upon her father’s attention thus. When Wang the Tiger was embarrassed and turned his eyes aside not knowing what he ought to say, the mother said in her pleasant voice,
“This little daughter of our craves your notice, too, and she is no whit less strong and fair than your son.”
Wang the Tiger was somewhat taken aback with this woman’s courage for he did not know her at all, except in the darkness of the nights in her turn, and so he could mutter out of courtesy,
“She is fair enough for a girl.”
But the child’s mother was not satisfied with this, for he scarcely looked at her daughter, and she pressed on and said,
“No, my husband, at least look at her, for she is no usual child. She walked three months before the boy did and talks now as though she were four instead of two and under. I have come to ask for a favor to me that you will give her learning also and share your goods with her as you do with your son,”
To this Wang the Tiger said in astonishment,
“How can I make a soldier out of a girl?”
Then in her steadfast, pleasant way the mother said,
“If not a soldier, then some skill in a school, for there are many such in these times, my husband.”
Suddenly Wang the Tiger heard that she called him by that name that no woman ever had, and she did not call him “my lord” as other women would, and he was embarrassed and out of his confusion he looked at the child because he could think of nothing to say. Then he saw that truly this girl was a very enticing little one, very round and fat and she had a tiny red mouth that she moved in smiles, and her eyes were large and black and her hands were fat and the nails very perfect and complete. He saw them because her mother had stained the nails red as women will do sometimes for children very loved. The child’s feet were cased in little pink silk shoes and the mother held them both in her one hand while the other she passed about the child’s middle as she leaped up and down upon her mother’s hand. When the mother saw him looking at the girl babe she said gently,
“I shall not bind her feet, and let us send her to a school and make such a woman out of her as there are here and there in these days.”
“But who will wed such a maid?” cried Wang the Tiger astonished.
To this the mother replied tranquilly, “Such a maid can wed whom she likes, I believe.”
Wang the Tiger took some thought at this and he looked at the woman. He had never looked at her before, deeming it enough if she served his purpose, and now as he looked he saw for the first time that she had a wise good face and a manner which made her seem composed and able to do what she liked, and when he looked at her she did not fear him and she looked back at him without giggling or drawing her mouth down as the other wife might have done. And he thought to himself in some wonder,
“This woman is more clever than I thought and I have not seen her very well before,” and aloud he said courteously and he rose as he spoke, “When the time comes I will not say nay to you if it seems a wise thing.”
Now it was a curious thing that she who had been so composed always and had lived content so far as Wang the Tiger knew or cared, now when she saw this new courtesy in the man seemed moved in some strange way. The color came dull and red into her cheeks and she looked at him earnestly and in silence and with yearning creeping into her eyes. But Wang the Tiger, seeing her change thus, felt the old repulsion against women well into his heart and his tongue was locked and he turned away and muttered that he had forgot something he had to do that hour, and he went away quickly, shaken in himself, and he did not like her when she looked at him in such a way.
But the fruit of the
hour was that sometimes if the mother sent a slave with the girl at the time when he called for his son to be brought so that the two came together, Wang the Tiger did not send the girl away. At first he feared the mother might return and make a custom of talking with him, but when he saw she did not, he let the girl be there for a while and he stared at her, for her sex made him shy of her even though she was but a child staggering hither and thither. Still she was a winning thing and he watched her often and laughed silently at her tempers and her broken words. His son was large and grave and not given to laughter, but this girl was small and quick and full of merriment and her eyes were forever seeking her father’s, and if she were not watched she abused her brother and snatched what he had away from him, being so quick. Without knowing it Wang the Tiger came to notice her in a certain fashion, and he knew her for his child among others if he saw a slave holding her at the gate in a crowd to see what went by upon the street, and sometimes he even stopped to touch her hand and see her flash her eyes at him to smile.
Then going into his house when she had thus smiled, he was content and at last he felt no more alone but a man among his own, both women and children.
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.