Pearl Buck - Sons

He rushed back over the land and he only knew he must be away from this place, this land — this woman — he must be at his own business. He walked back through the hard autumn sunlight, falling brilliant and clear across the fields, but he saw none of it and noted no beauty.

At dawn he was up and on his red horse and the horse was curveting and impatient in the chill air and his hoofs thudded heavily upon the cobbled street and the pocked lad, well fed with all he had eaten for his morning meal, was on his ass and they rode around to the gate of Wang the Eldest to fetch that other lad. But before they could wait at all a man servant came running out of the gate and he cried as he ran somewhere,

“What a thing of evil is this — what a curse upon this house!” And he ran his way somewhere.

Then Wang the Tiger felt his impatience rise in him and he shouted out,

“What curse is it? Curse it is that the sun is near the horizon and I am not on my way yet!”

But the man did not look back. Then Wang the Tiger cursed very heartily and he cried to the pocked lad,

“That cursed lad your cousin is nothing but a burden to me and never will be else! Go and find him and tell him he is to come or I will not have him!”

The pocked lad slid down at once from his small old ass and ran in and more slowly Wang the Tiger came down from his horse and went to the gate and gave the reins over to the gateman to hold for him. But before he could go further the lad was out again, white as a spirit and breathing as fast as though he had run around the town walls. He gasped out between his breaths,

“He will never come again — he is hung and dead!”

“What do you say, you small monkey!” shouted Wang the Tiger and he leaped and ran into his brother’s house.

There was confusion indeed and men and women and servants and all were gathered about something in the court, and above the din and shouting a woman’s loud shrieks were heard, and it was the lad’s mother who so cried. But Wang the Tiger pushed them aside and in the center of the crowd was Wang the Eldest. His fat face was yellow as old tallow and all shaken with tears, and he held supported in his arms the body of his second son. The lad lay there outstretched in the court, under the bright morning sky, dead, and his head hung back over his father’s arm. He had hanged himself with his girdle upon the beam in the room where he slept with his elder brother, and the brother had not known it until he woke in the morning, for he slept hard after wine at some merrymaking the night before. When he woke in the pale dawn and saw the slight form dangling he thought at first it was a garment and he wondered why it hung there but when he looked again he screamed and so woke the house.

Then Wang the Tiger, when one had told him this tale and a score of others helped in the telling, stood and looked down on this dead son with the strangest feeling, and he pitied this lad for a while as he never had when the lad was alive. He was so very small and slight now he was dead. And Wang the Eldest looked up and saw his brother there and he blubbered,

“I never dreamed this child of mine would choose death to going with you! You must have treated him very ill to make him hate you like this! Well for you that you are my brother, or I would — I would—”

“No, Brother,” said Wang the Tiger more gently than he was used to speak, “I did not treat him ill. He even had an ass to ride when others older than he walked. But neither did I dream he was brave enough to die. I might have made something of him after all if I had known he had in him the power to die!”

He stood and stared awhile. But bustle began suddenly when the serving man who had run somewhere returned with a geomancer and with priests and their drums and with all those whose duty it is to come with such an untoward death, and in the commotion Wang the Tiger went away and waited in a room alone.

But when he had waited and done all that he should do as brother in so sad a house he mounted his horse and he rode away. And as he went he was sadder than he had been and he was compelled to harden himself and to remember again and again how he had never beaten the lad or treated him ill in any way and none could have known he had this despair in him to take his own life, and Wang the Tiger told himself it was so destined by heaven and not any man could have averted this thing, for so the life of everyone is wholly with heaven. Thus he forced himself to forget the pale lad and how he had looked when his head lay over his father’s arm, and Wang the Tiger said to himself,

“Even sons are not all blessing, it may be.”

When he had comforted himself like this he was better, and he called heartily to the pocked lad,

“Come, lad, there is a long road before us and we must set out upon it!”

WHEN WANG THE TIGER struck his horse with the braided leathern whip he carried and he let the beast have its full way and the horse sped over the countryside as though it were winged. It was a day fit to start upon so high a venture as Wang the Tiger’s, for the sky was cloudless and the wind blew keen and cool and full of vigor and it turned the trees this way and that and wrenched at them and whipped the late leaves from their branches and it stirred the dust in the roadways and whirled itself over the shorn grain lands. In Wang the Tiger’s heart a recklessness rose like the very wind itself and he purposely took his way far from the earthen house and he made a wide circle from the place where Pear Blossom lived and he said to his own heart,

“All the past is finished and I look forward to my greatness and to my glory!”

So the day began and the sun rose full and enormous and glittering over the edge of the fields, but he looked at it unblinking, and it seemed to him that heaven itself set its seal upon him in such a day as this and he would achieve his greatness, for greatness was his destiny.

Early in the morning he came to the hamlets where his men were, and his trusty harelipped man came out to meet him and he said,

“It is very well, my captain, that you have come, for the men are rested and full of food and they are chafing to be on to more freedom.”

“Round them out, then, when they have had their morning meal,” shouted Wang the Tiger, “and let us be on our way and half way to our own lands by tomorrow.”

Now during these days that Wang the Tiger had been in the house of Wang the Second he had been thinking much of what lands he should take for his own rule and he had talked with his brother who was cautious and wise, and it seemed to them that the lands just over into the borders of the next province were very good lands for the purpose and the best to be had. These regions were far enough from Wang the Tiger’s home so that if dire need came he would not be taking from those who were his own people and yet near enough so that if he were vanquished in a war he could take refuge among his own. Moreover, it was near enough so that the silver he would need until he was established could be brought to him easily and without too great risk of robbers. As for the lands themselves, they were famous good lands where the famine did not strike too often, and some of the lands were high and some were low, and there were mountains to serve for retreat and hiding. There was besides all this a certain highway that was a passage between the north and south for travellers coming to and fro, and such travellers could very well be taxed for revenues and the right to pass that way. There were two or three large towns too, and a small city, so that Wang the Tiger need not be wholly dependent upon the people who filled the earth. These lands had another value also, and it was that they sent out the best grain to the markets for wine and the people were not very poor.