At this the men looked at each other again, none understanding or believing that anyone could envy the life they had, because to them it was so bitter. They were only more filled with doubt of this young man who sat there speaking in his eager willful open way because he said he loved an earthen house. Well they knew how he had lived, and in what luxury, for they knew how his cousins lived, and how his uncles, the one like a prince in a far city, and Wang the Merchant, now their landlord, who grew rich so monstrously and secretly upon his usury. These two they all hated, while they envied them their riches, too, and they looked with coming hatred and with fear upon this young man, saying in their hearts they knew he lied, because they could not believe there was in the whole world a man who would choose an earthen house when he might have a great one.
They rose, then, and Yuan rose, too, scarcely knowing if he need or not, since he was not used to rise except to his few superiors and he scarcely knew where to put these plain men, dressed in patched coats and in loose and faded cotton garments. But still he wished to please them somehow, so he rose, and they bowed to him and said a thing or two in courtesy, and they answered, their doubts clear enough upon their simple faces, and then they went away.
There were left only the old tenant and his wife, and they looked anxiously at Yuan and at last the old man began to plead, and he said, “Sir, tell us truly why you are here so that we may know ahead what evils are to come. Tell us what war your father plans, that he sends you out to spy. Help us poor folk, who are at the mercy of the gods and of the lords of war and of the rich men and governors and all such mighty evil ones!”
Then Yuan answered, understanding now their fearfulness, “I am no spy, I say! My father did not send me — I have told everything, and told it truly.”
Still the old pair, too, could not believe him. The man sighed and turned away, and the woman stood in piteous silence and Yuan did not know what to do with them, and was about to be impatient with them, until remembering his horse he asked, “What of my horse? — I forgot—”
“I led him to the kitchen, sir,” the old man answered. “I fed him with some straw and dried peas, and drew him water from the pond.” And when Yuan thanked him, he said, “It is nothing — are you not my old master’s grandson?” And at this suddenly he dropped to his knees before Yuan and groaned aloud, “Sir, once your grandfather was one of us upon the land — a common man like us. He lived here in this hamlet as we do. But his destiny was better than ours is, who have lived on poor and hardly always — yet for his sake who once was like us, tell us truly why you are come!”
Then Yuan lifted up the old man, and not too gently, either, because he began to be very weary of all this doubt, and he was used to being believed in what he said, being son of a great man, and he cried, “It is only as I say, and I will not say it over! Wait and see if any evil comes through me upon you!” And to the woman he said, “Bring me food, good wife, because I am hungry!”
They served him then in silence, and he ate the food. But it seemed not so good to him tonight as it had been earlier, and he soon had enough of it, and at last he rose with no more words and went again and lay down upon the bed for sleep. For a while he could not sleep, because he found an anger in him against these simple men. “Stupid fellows!” he cried to himself. “If they are honest, still they are stupid — knowing nothing in this little place — shut off—” And he doubted they were worth fighting for, after all, and he felt himself very wise beside them, and comforted by his greater wisdom he fell asleep again deeply in the darkness and the stillness.
Six days Yuan lived in the earthen house before his father found him, and they were the sweetest days of his whole life. No one came again to ask him of anything and the old pair served him silently and he forgot their doubts of him and he thought of neither past nor future, but only of each day. He did not enter any town nor go once to see his uncle in the great house, even. Each night at dark he lay down to sleep, and he rose early every morning in the sharp wintry sunlight, and even before he ate he looked out of the door across the fields now faintly green with winter wheat. The land stretched out before him, far and smooth and plain, and he could see, upon its smoothness, the flecks of blue which were men and women working to make the earth ready for the soon coming of spring, or some who came and went across the paths to town or village. And every morning he thought of verses, and he remembered every beauty of the distant hills, carved out of sandy stone and set against a blue cloudless sky, and for the first time he saw the beauty of his country.
All his childhood long Yuan had heard his captain use those two words “my country,” or he said “our country,” or sometimes to Yuan he said most earnestly “your country.” But Yuan had felt no quickening when he heard them. The truth was Yuan had lived a very small, close life in those courts with his father. He had not often gone even into the camp where the soldiers brawled and ate and slept and even when the Tiger went abroad for war Wang Yuan lived on surrounded by his special guard of quiet men in middle years, who were bade to be silent near their young lord and tell no idle, lustful tales. So always there were soldiers standing near Yuan between him and what he might have seen.
Now every day he looked where he would, and there was nothing between him and all that he could see about him. He could see straight to where the sky met earth, and he could see the little wooded hamlets here and there upon the land, in the distance to the west the wall of the town, black and serrated against the porcelain sky. Thus looking every day as far and freely as he would, and walking on the earth or riding on his horse, it came into his mind that now he knew what “country” was. Those fields, this earth, this very sky, those pale, lovely, barren hills, these were his country.
And here came a strange thing, that Yuan ceased even to ride his horse because it seemed to lift him off the land. At first he rode because he had always ridden a horse, and to ride it was to him the same as using his own feet. But now everywhere he went the farming people stared at him, and they always said to one another, if they did not know him, “Well, that is a soldier’s horse, surely, and it never carried any honest load,” and within two or three days’ time he heard the gossip of him spread and people said, “There is that son of Wang the Tiger, riding his great high horse everywhere and lording it as all his family do. Why is he here? It must be he looks upon the land and tallies crops for his father and plans some new tax on us for war.” It came to be that whenever Yuan rode by they looked sourly at him and then turned away and spat into the dust.
At first this scornful spitting made Yuan angry and astonished, for it was new to him to be so treated, who had never feared anyone except his father, and who had been used to servants hurrying to his bidding. But after a time he fell to thinking why it was, and how these people had been so oppressed, for so he had learned in the school of war, and then he turned good-humored again and let them spit to ease themselves.
At last he even left his horse tied to the willow tree and walked and although it came a little hardly to him at first to use his own legs, yet in a day or two he was used to it. He put aside his usual leathern shoes and wore the straw sandals that the farmers wore, and he liked to feel beneath his feet the solid earth of path and roads, dry with the months of winter sunshine. He liked to pass a man and meet his stare as though he were any stranger and not a war lord’s son to be cursed and feared.