Pearl Buck - Sons

But that fountain was flowing free, now, and naught could ever seal it again, and seeing this woman sitting there on the bed, he drew his breath in sharply, and she hearing it, lifted her eyes and looked at him fully.

So he went to her and he found her silent but passionate and frank upon her marriage bed, and he loved her mightily from that hour, and since he had known no other, she seemed to him faultless.

Once in the middle of the night he turned to her and he said in a husky whisper,

“I do not even know who you are.”

And she answered calmly, “What does it matter except that I am here? But some time I will tell you.”

And he let it pass, content for the time, for they were neither of them usual folk, and both their lives were not such as are commonly lived.

But the trusty men did not let Wang the Tiger have more than the night, and the next morning at dawn they waited for him, and they saw him come out of his door, calm and refreshed from his marriage chamber. Then the harelipped man said, bowing,

“Sir, and honored, we did not tell you yesterday since it was a day of joy, but we have heard rumors from the north and the provincial ruler has heard that you have seized the government and comes down against you.”

And the Hawk said in his turn, “I heard it from a beggar who came from that way and he said he passed ten thousand men upon the way marching down upon us.”

And the Pig Butcher added his tale, stammering through his thick lips in his haste to speak as he had been told,

“I–I also heard it — when I went out to the market to see how they stick their pigs in this city and a butcher told me.”

But Wang the Tiger was all softened and at ease and for the first time he could not bring himself to think of war and he smiled in his slight way and said,

“I can trust my men, and let them come.” And he sat down to drink a little tea before he ate and he sat at a table beside a window and it was broad day and a thought came to him suddenly, and it was this, that there is a night at the end of every day, and he seemed to know it for the first time, now, so meaningless had all other nights of his life been except this one night.

But there was one who heard what his trusty men said, and she stood by the curtain and looked through a crack of it, and she saw they were dismayed to see their leader sunk in some pleasing thought of his own. When Wang the Tiger rose and went out of the room to go to the one where food was eaten, she called clearly to the harelipped man and she said,

“Tell me all you have heard.”

He was very loath to talk to a woman of what was none of her affair, and he muttered and made as if he had nothing to tell until she said imperiously,

“Do not play the fool with me, who have seen blood and fighting and battle and retreat these five years since I was grown! Tell me!”

Then wondering and abashed before her bold eyes fixed on his and not dropped as the eyes of women usually are, especially when they are newly wed and should be full of shame, he told her as though she had been a man what they all feared and how they were in danger because more men marched against them than they had, and many of their men were untried in their loyalty if a battle came. She sent him away quickly then saying he must beg Wang the Tiger to come to her.

He came as he had never come to any summons, smiling more softly than anyone had ever seen him smile. She sat down upon the bed and he sat down beside her and took up the end of her sleeve and fingered it and he was more abashed in her presence than she was in his and he kept his eyes down, smiling.

But she began to speak swiftly in her clear, somewhat piercing voice,

“I am not a woman such as will stand in your way if there is a battle to be fought and they tell me an army marches against you.”

“Who told you?” he answered. “I will not trouble myself for three days. I have given myself three days.”

“But if they come nearer in three days?”

“An army cannot come two hundred miles in three days.”

“How can you know what day they started?”

“The tale could not have reached the provincial seat in so short a time.”

“It could have!” she said swiftly.

Now here was a strange thing. These two, a man and a woman, could sit and talk of something far from love and yet Wang the Tiger was as knit to her as he had been in the night. He was amazed that a woman could talk like this for he had never talked with one before and he had always thought them pretty children in tall bodies, and one reason why he feared them was because he did not know what they knew nor what to say to them. He was so made that even with a woman paid for he could not rush to her as a common soldier does, and half his diffidence with women was because he feared the speech he must make with them. But here he sat and talked with this woman as easily as though she were a man and he listened to her when she said on,

“You have fewer men than the provincial army has, and when a warrior finds his army smaller than his enemy’s then he must use guile.”

At this he made his silent laugh and said in his gruff way,

“Well I know that, or I would not have had you for mine now.”

She dropped her eyes quickly at this as though to veil something that might show itself in them and she bit the edge of her lower lip and she answered,

“The simplest guile is to kill a man, but one must catch him first. The same simple guile will not do now.”

Then Wang the Tiger answered with pride, “I will pit my men against thrice their number of state soldiers. I have trained them and taught them this whole winter and hardened them with boxing and running and fencing and with all feints of war and none of them is afraid to die. Moreover, it is known what state soldiers are, and they will always turn to the strongest side, and doubtless the soldiers of this province are not better paid than any others like them.”

Then she said with some impatience, and she drew her sleeve out of his fingers as she spoke,

“Still you have no plan! Hear me — I have a plan made while we talked. There is the old magistrate you have guarded in his court. Use him as a hostage of a kind.”

Now she spoke so earnestly and soberly that Wang the Tiger listened to her, yet was amazed that he did, for he was not a man who often took counsel with others, thinking himself sufficient for anything. But he listened and she said,

“Take your soldiers out and take him also and force him and tell him what he is to say, that he shall say what you command. Let him go out to meet the provincial general with a trusty man on either side of him who will hear what he says, and if he does not say what you have told him, let them have their swords ready and plunge them into his bowels, and that shall be a sign for battle. But he has a gall no larger than a hen’s. He will say what he is told, and let him say that nothing has been done without his consent, that the rumor of a rebellion is only because his own old general rebelled and if it had not been for you who delivered him the seals of state would have been stolen and his own life gone.”

Now this seemed excellent good guile to Wang the Tiger, and he listened with his eyes fastened on her face as she spoke. He saw the whole plan there before him and he rose and laughed noiselessly to think what she was and he went out to do what she had said, and she came close behind him. He commanded a trusty man to go and fetch the old magistrate out and bring him to the hall of audience. Then the woman had a fancy and it was that they would go and sit in the audience room, he and she together, and let the old magistrate come before them, and Wang the Tiger was willing because they must frighten the old man thoroughly. So they sat themselves down on the dais, Wang the Tiger in a carven chair, and the woman beside him in another chair.