Pearl Buck - Sons

Now the matter was thus and this was how Wang the Landlord’s eldest son came to put into a gaol.

This son of Wang the Landlord’s was now in the twenty-and-eighth year of his age and he was not wed nor even betrothed. The reason for this very strange thing was that he had gone in his youth for a year or two to a new sort of a school in the town, and there he had learned many things, and one of the things he learned was that it was a vile slavery to an old custom for a young man to be wed by his parents to a maid they chose for him, and that all young men ought to choose their own maids to wife, maids whom they had seen and had talked with and could love. When, therefore, Wang the Landlord made a survey of all the marriageable maids to fix upon one for his eldest son, this son was very rebellious in the matter and he flung himself about and pouted and said he would choose his own wife.

At first Wang the Landlord and his lady were outraged at this notion, and for once they were agreed upon a thing, and the lady cried out to her son with heat,

“And how can you see a decent maid so close as to talk with her and know if you like her or not? And who so able to choose as your parents who formed you and who know your every turn of mind and nature?”

But the young man was full of argument and temper and he pushed his long silken sleeves back from his white smooth hands, and he tossed the black hair back from his pale forehead and he cried out in his turn,

“Neither you nor my father know anything except old dead customs, and you do not know that in the south all the sons of wealthy and learned people let their sons choose for themselves!” And when he saw his father and mother look at each other, and when he saw his father wipe his brow with his sleeve and his mother purse up her lips, he cried again, “Well, and betroth me, then, and I will leave my home and never see you more!”

This frightened the parents beyond measure and Wang the Landlord said in haste,

“But tell us what maid it is you love and we will see if it can be arranged.”

Now the truth was that the young man had seen no such maid as he could love for wife, for the women he had known were such as could be easily bought, but he would not tell that he had seen no maid he loved, and he only pouted out his red lips and stared sullenly down at his pretty finger nails. But he looked so violent and so willful that this time and every time his parents spoke of the matter they pacified him in the end again and again by saying, “Well, well, let it be for now!” Twice, indeed, had Wang the Landlord need to cry off the bargain with some maid he had begun to negotiate for, because when the young man heard of this he swore he would hang himself on a beam as his brother had done, and this terrified his mother and father so that they gave in to him every time.

Yet as time went on both Wang the Landlord and his lady grew the more eager to see their son wed, for he was their eldest son and chief heir and his sons must be the chief among their grandsons. Well, too, did Wang the Landlord know that the young man went to this tea house and to that and spent his youth here and there, and while he knew that all young men are so who have no need to labor for what they eat and wear, still as Wang the Landlord passed out of his own lustiness into a quieter age, he grew very uneasy at this son of his and both Wang the Landlord and his lady feared that if their son did not wed soon he would come some day with an idle maid out of a tea house for wife, such an one as it is well enough to take for a concubine but is a shame for a wife. But the youth, if they spoke their fears to him, talked ruthlessly of how in these new days young men and women were freed from their parents’ rule, and how men and women were free and equal, and he said many such foolish things, so that these two parents could do nothing but hold their peace, for the young man’s tongue was so glib and swift there was no answering him and they early learned to be silent while he poured out his fiery discontents and flashed his eyes from one to the other of the old pair, and every second flung back his long cut hair and smoothed it back with his soft white hand. But after such speeches when he was gone again, for he was very restless and never there for long, the lady looked at her husband with reproach and she said,

“You have taught him these things with your own lewd ways and he learned from his own father to satisfy himself with these flower girls instead of with an honest woman.”

She drew her sleeve across her eyes as she spoke and wiped one eye and the other, and she felt herself very ill used. As for Wang the Landlord he was in great alarm for he knew that this mild beginning could lead up to a great storm, for the older the lady grew the more righteous and ill-tempered she grew also, and he rose hastily to go away and he said very meekly,

“You know that now as I pass into my age I do not go as once I did, and I try to hear your counsel, and if you have a way out of this turmoil, I promise I will follow what you say.”

Now the truth was that this lady could not herself think of any way to manage this turbulent son, and she must ease herself somehow and Wang the Landlord saw that her temper was rising in her, so he made all haste to go away out of his house. And as he passed through his court he saw that other wife of his there in the sunshine nursing a child, and he said to her hastily,

“Go in and fetch something for your mistress, because she is waxing angry, take her tea or one of her prayer books or something, and praise her and say some priest or other said this or that about her or some such thing!”

The woman rose obediently, holding her child in her arm as she went, and as he went out into the street and thought where he might turn, Wang the Landlord blessed the hour he saw this second woman of his, for if he had been alone with his lady it would have been ill for him. But this second woman grew with the years even milder and more placid than she had been, and in this Wang the Landlord was very fortunate, since two women with a common lord will oftentimes quarrel and lead a noisy life, especially if one of them or both of them love their lord.

But this second woman comforted Wang the Landlord in many small ways and she did things that the servants would not. For the servants knew who had the authority in this house of Wang the Landlord’s, and when he roared for some servant, man or maid, the servant called out, “Oh, aye, aye!” but he lagged or did not come, and if Wang the Landlord grew peevish, the servant made excuse, “The mistress commanded me thus and thus,” and so silenced his master.

But this second wife served him secretly, and she it was who comforted him. When he came back from his few lands out of humor and weary, she saw to it that he had hot tea in his pot or if it were summer that there was a melon cool in the well, and she sat by and fanned him while he ate, and she fetched water to bathe his feet and brought fresh hose and shoes. To her also he poured out all his grievances and his hatreds, and chief of these was the grievance he had against his tenants and he told her all his bitter tales and he would say,

“Yes, and today that old snag-toothed woman who is mother to the tenant on the west land poured water into the basket of grain the steward weighed — he is such a fool, or else knave, and they pay him not to see — but I saw how the scale leaped!”

To such she made answer, soothing him, “I do not believe they cheat you much, you are so clever and the cleverest wisest man I ever knew.”

His bitterness against his rebellious son he poured out to her, too, and she soothed him there also, and now as he went along the street he planned how he would tell her his lady blamed him cruelly and he dwelled upon the sweetness of her answer, how she would say as she had many times,