Pearl Buck - Sons

But the lady was not thinking of him this time and she went on without heeding his muttering and she said,

“I have said to myself that humble as I am and a mere woman, yet I am my son’s mother and I ought to come and thank my brother-in-law for what you have done for our worthless second son, and though my thanks can be nothing to one like you yet it is my pleasure to do what I ought and so I do it spite of every burden and slight I have to bear.”

Here she cast another of her looks at her lord and he scratched his head and looked at her foolishly and was all in a sweat again because he did not know what she was about to say and being so fat he sweat at nothing at all. But she went on,

“So here be my thanks, Brother-in-law, and worthless though they are they come from a sincere heart. As for my son, I will say that if there is a lad worthy of your kindness he is that one and he is the kindest, best and gentlest lad and such a wise head as he has! I am his mother and although it is said mothers see the best always in their children, still I will say again that we gave you the best son we have, my lord and I.”

All this time Wang the Tiger had sat and stared at her as his way was when anyone spoke, and he stared so strangely one could not know whether he heard what was said or not, except when his answer came, and it came now, brutal and blunt,

“If that is so, Sister-in-law, then I am sorry for my brother and you. He is the timidest, weakest lad I ever did see and his gall is no larger than the gall in a white hen. I wish you could have given me your eldest son. He is a good willful lad and I could break him and make him into something of a good willful man, obedient to me and none other. But this second son of yours is always weeping and it is like carrying a leaking dipper with me everywhere. There is no breaking him for he has nothing in him and so no making him, either. No, both my brothers’ lads disappoint me, for your lad is so soft and timid his brains are washed out in tears, and the other one is good and lusty and rough enough for the life but he is thoughtless and he loves his laughter and he is a clown, and I do not know how high a clown can go. It is an evil thing for me that I have no son of my own to use now when I need him.”

Now what the lady might have said to such a speech as this none knows, but Wang the Eldest was trembling for he knew no one had ever spoken to her so plainly as this before, and the high red was flooding into her face and she opened her lips to make sharp answer. But before her voice could shape the words, her eldest son came out suddenly from behind a curtain where he was listening and he cried out eagerly,

“Oh, let me go, my mother — I want to go!”

There he stood before them all, eager and beautiful in his youth, and he looked quickly from one face to the other. He wore a bright blue gown the color of a peacock’s feathers, such as young lords love to wear, and shoes of foreign leather, and he had a jade ring on his finger and his hair was cut in the newest fashion and smoothed back with fragrant oil. He was pale as young men in rich houses are pale who never need to labor or be burned by the sun, and his hands were soft as a woman’s hands. Yet there was something very lusty in his looks too, for all his beauty and paleness, and he had a good, impatient eye. Nor did he move languidly when he forgot himself and forgot that it was the fashion for young men about town to be languid and careless of anything. No, he could be as he was now, his languor all laid aside, when he was full of the flame of a desire.

But his mother cried out sharply,

“Now this is the greatest nonsense I ever heard, for you are the eldest son and after your father the head of the house, and how can we let you go to wars and perhaps even go to a battle and be killed? We have spared nothing at all for you and we have sent you to every school in this town and hired scholars to teach you, and we have loved you too well to send you south to a school even, and how can we let you go to war?” Then seeing that Wang the Eldest sat there silent and hanging his head she said sharply, “My lord, am I to take this whole burden on myself, too?”

Then Wang the Eldest said feebly,

“Your mother is right, my son. She is always right, and we cannot spare you to such hazard.”

But the young man, although he was nearly nineteen years old, began to stamp his feet and to weep and to storm and he ran and beat his head against the door lintel and he cried out,

“I shall poison myself if I cannot do what I like!”

Then his parents rose up in great dismay and the lady cried out that the young lord’s servant was to be sent for, and when the man came running in terror, she cried to him,

“Take the child to some place for play and divert him and see if this anger can go out of him!”

And Wang the Eldest made haste to take a good handful of silver out of his girdle and he pressed it upon his son and said,

“Take it, my son, and go and buy yourself something you like or use it for a game or whatever you like.”

At first the lad pushed the silver away and made as if he would not have such consolation, but the man servant coaxed and besought him, so that after a while the youth took the silver as though very unwillingly, and then flinging himself about and crying out that he would go, and he would go with his uncle, he suffered himself to be led away.

When it was over the lady sank upon a chair and she sighed piteously and she gasped,

“He has always had such — a spirit — we have not known how to do with him — he is much harder to teach than the one we gave you!”

Now Wang the Tiger had sat gravely and watched all that passed, and now he said,

“It is easier to teach where there is a will than where there is nothing. I could make that lad if I had him and all this storming is because he has not been taught.”

But the lady had been too put about to endure more and she would not bear it to have it said her sons were not well taught. So she rose in her majestic way and she said, and she bowed,

“Doubtless you have much to say to each other,” and she went out.

Then Wang the Tiger looked at his eldest brother with a grim pity and they said nothing for a time, only Wang the Eldest began to drink his wine again, but not with any zest now, and his fat face was mournful. At last he said more thoughtfully than he usually spoke, and he sighed heavily before he spoke,

“There is a thing that is a riddle to me and it is this, that a woman can be so yielding and delicate and pliant to man’s will when she is young and when her years come on her she grows another person altogether and is so scolding and troublesome and devoid of all reason as to keep a man dazed. I swear sometimes I will keep off all women, for I do believe my second one will learn of the first one, and they are all so.” And he looked at his brother with a strange envy and with eyes as sorrowful as a great child’s and he said sadly, “You are fortunate and more fortunate than I; you are free of women and you are free of land. Twice bound I am. I am bound by this accursed land my father left me. If I do not attend to it we have nothing from it, for these accursed country folk are all robbers and leagued against the landlord, however just and good he be. And as for my steward — who has ever heard of an honest man who was a steward?” He drew down his thick mouth plaintively and he sighed again and looked again at his brother and said, “Yes, you are fortunate. You have no land and you are bound to no woman at all.”

And Wang the Tiger replied in greatest scorn,

“I do not know any women at all.”

And he was glad when the four days were gone and he could go to the courts of Wang the Second.