Pearl Buck - Sons

This he said and he bowed very stiffly and the old magistrate rose and bowed also and he murmured,

“Be sure you shall be well rewarded for all your faithful years.”

And the magistrate looked after the little general regretfully as he withdrew and he sighed and he thought to himself that after all he had been a very easy man of war and if he had not put down the robbers still he was not hard to have in the courts except when his little tempers flew up over some small question of meat and drink and these were easily settled. And then the old magistrate stole a look at Wang the Tiger and he was very ill at ease because Wang the Tiger looked young and harsh and very fierce and ill-tempered. But he only said in his peaceable way,

“Now you have the reward you wish. You may have the courts the old general had as soon as he is gone, and you may take the soldiers. But there is one thing more. What shall I say to those above me when it is known I have changed my general, and what even if the old general goes to complain of me?”

But Wang the Tiger was clever and he answered at once, “It will all bring glory to you. Tell them you hired a brave and he put down the robbers and you have retained the brave as a private guard. Then do you force the general — and I will put my force behind yours — to write and ask that he be allowed to retire and he must name me in his place, and so shall the glory be yours, that you hired me and through me you routed the robbers.”

Then, although unwillingly, the old magistrate saw this was no mean plan and he began to be somewhat cheered except that he was still afraid of Wang the Tiger and he feared his ruthlessness lest it ever be turned against himself. But Wang the Tiger let him be afraid, for this suited him, and he smiled his cold smile.

Now did Wang the Tiger settle himself into those courts, for the winter was come down out of the north. He was well pleased with all he had done, for his men were fed and clothed and his revenues began to come in and he could buy them winter garments and they were all warm and fed.

When he had arranged everything for them and the deep of the winter drew on and the days passed each other in regular procession, Wang the Tiger bethought himself suddenly one idle day of the woman he had still in the gaol. He smiled to himself harshly when he thought of her and he shouted to the guard at his door,

“Go and fetch that woman out of the gaol I sent there some sixty days or so ago! I had forgot that I have not fixed her punishment and she tried to kill me.” Then he laughed silently and said again, “She is tamed by now, I dare swear!”

So he waited in some pleasure and interest to see how tamed she would be. He sat alone in a hall of his own and beside him was a large iron brazier of coals. Outside the snow of deep winter fell heavily and the court was filled with the snow and it hung thickly on every branch and tree, for there was no wind on that day, only a very bitter, silent cold, frozen with the dampness of the falling snow. But Wang the Tiger waited idle and warm beside the brazier of coals, and he was wrapped well in a sheepskin robe, and a tigerskin was thrown across the back of his chair to keep the chill away.

It was nearly an hour before he heard a commotion in the silent court and he looked toward the door. The guard was coming with his prisoner, but he had two other guards to help him. Even so she twisted this way and that and she strained against the ropes that bound her. But the guards forced her into the door and in the struggling the snow swept in with them. When they had her fast at last and standing before Wang the Tiger, the guard said in apology,

“General, forgive me because so long a time has passed before I could obey your command. But we have had to force this young hag every step. She lay naked in her bed in the gaol and we could not go in for decency’s sake, for we are respectable men with wives of our own, and so the other women in the gaol had to force her clothes upon her. She bit and scratched and fought against them but at last they had enough on her so that we could go in and tie her and drag her out. She is mad — it must be she is mad. We have never seen a woman like this. There are those in the gaol who say even that she is not a woman but a fox changed into a woman for some evil purpose of the devils.”

But the young woman shook back her streaming hair when she heard this. Her hair had been cut short once, but now it was grown nearly to her shoulders. She screamed forth,

“I am not mad unless it be with hate against him !” and she cursed and she thrust her chin out at Wang the Tiger and she spat at him and would have spat on him except that he drew back hastily and the guards seeing her purpose jerked her back so that her spittle fell hissing upon the hot coals of the brazier. At this the guard stared and he said again with conviction,

“You see she is mad, my general!”

But Wang the Tiger said nothing. He only fastened his eyes on this strange wild creature, and he listened to her speech, for even when she cursed it was not the speech of a common or ignorant woman. He looked at her closely and he saw that although she was slender and now gaunt to thinness, she was still handsome and haughty, and she did not look like a thick country wench. Yet her feet were big and they looked as though they had never been bound, and this was not as it should be in those parts for a woman who came from a good family. He could make nothing of her, therefore, with all these contradictions, and he only stared on at her and watched her fine black brows twisting above her angry eyes and her thin pouting lips drawn back from her smooth white teeth, and as he watched it came to him that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Yes, even with her face pale and pinched and angry she was beautiful. So at last he said slowly,

“I have never known you at all. Why should you hate me?”

And the woman answered passionately, and she had a clear, piercing voice, “You killed my lord and I will not rest until I have revenged him. Though you kill me I will hold my dead eyes open until I am revenged for him!”

At this the guard was horrified and he lifted his sword and he cried, outraged, “To whom do you speak, vixen?” And he would have smote her across the mouth with the flat of his sword except that Wang the Tiger made a sign that she was not to be touched. Then Wang the Tiger said in his still way,

“Was the Leopard your master?”

And she cried in the same piercing, passionate voice, “Yes!”

Then Wang the Tiger leaned forward indolently and he said quietly and very scornfully,

“I have killed him. Now you have a new master, and it is I.”

At this the young woman lunged forward as if she would have fallen upon him and killed him if she could and the two guards struggled with her, and Wang the Tiger watched them. When they had her fast again so she could not move, the sweat poured down her temples and she was gasping and half weeping, but she stood and fixed her furious eyes on Wang the Tiger’s face. Then he met her eyes and stared at her and she stared back at him in defiance, and as though she did not fear him and would not look away and as if she had determined to down his look before she lowered her own bold eyes. But Wang the Tiger only stared on indomitably and without any anger visible, and with a mighty and calm patience and for all his depth of anger he had a power of such strong patience if he were not angry.

As for the woman, she stared on for a long time. But at last, although he still stared unmoved, her eyelids fluttered and she gave a cry and turned and she said to the guards,

“Oh, take me away to the gaol again!” And she would not look at him any more.

Then Wang the Tiger, smiling in the mirthless way he had, said to her,