But all the travellers, being so weary and ready to look at anything or listen anywhere, had listened to everything said, and they all took part against Yuan and with the servant and some cried out, “It is true there is no end of flies. They come from none knows where but they have their life to live too, doubtless!” And one aged lady said, “Aye, and they have a right to it. As for me, I would not dare to take life even from a fly!” And another said scornfully, “He is one of those students come back from abroad to try his little foreign notions on us!”
At this the large fat man near Yuan, who had eaten mightily of rice and meats and was now drinking tea very gravely, belching loudly as he drank, said suddenly, “So that is what he is! Here I have sat my whole day through staring at him to see what he was and making nothing of him!” And he gazed on at Yuan in pleased wonder, now that he knew what he was, drinking as he stared and belching up his wind until Yuan could not bear to see him, and looked steadfastly away into the flat green country.
He was too proud to answer. Nor could he eat. He sat on looking out of the window hour after hour. Under the hot cloudy sky the country grew more poor, more flat, more flat with wastes of water as the train sped north. At every station the people looked to Yuan more wretched, more plagued with boils and sore eyes and even though there was water everywhere they were not washed, and many of the women had their feet bound still in the old evil way he thought was gone. He looked at them and he could not bear them. “These are my people!” he said bitterly within himself at last, and he forgot the white foreign ships of war.
Yet there was one more bitterness that he must bear. At the far end of the car sat a white man whom Yuan had not seen. Now he came past to descend from the train, at a certain little mud-walled country town where he lived. And as he passed Yuan he noted him and his young sad face, and he remembered how Yuan had cried out against the flies, and he said in his own tongue, meaning to be kind and seeing what Yuan was, “Don’t be discouraged, friend! I fight against the flies, too, and shall keep on fighting!”
Yuan looked up suddenly at the foreign voice and words There he saw a small thin white man, a little common-looking fellow in a grey cotton suit of clothes and a white sun helmet, and with a common face, not newly shaven, though the pale blue eyes were kind enough, and Yuan saw he was a foreign priest. He could not answer. This was the bitterest thing to bear, that here was a white man to see what he had seen, and know what he had known this day. He turned away and would not answer. But from his seat he saw the man get off the train and trudge through the crowd and turn towards the mud-walled city. Then Yuan remembered that other white man who had said, “If you would live as I have lived—”
And Yuan asked himself accusingly, “Why did I never see all this before? I have seen nothing until now!”
Yet it was only the beginning of what Yuan must see. For when at last he stood before his father, Wang the Tiger, he saw him as he never knew he was. There the Tiger stood, clinging to the door post of his hall waiting for his son, and all his old strength was gone, even his old petulance, and there was only an old grey man, whose long white whiskers dropped down sparsely on his chin, and whose eyes were red and filmed with age and with too much wine-drinking, so that until Yuan came near he could not see him, but must listen for his voice.
Now Yuan had seen with wonder how weedy were the courts that he came through and how few the soldiers were who stood about, a few ragged idle fellows, and how the very guard at the gate had no gun and let him come in as he would and asked no questions and gave no courteous greeting as he should to his general’s son. But Yuan was not ready to see his father look so gaunt and thin. The old Tiger stood there in an old robe of grey stuff, and it was even patched upon the elbows where his bones had worn through upon the arm of his chair, and on his feet were slippers of cloth and the heels turned under, and his sword was not in his hand now.
Then Yuan cried out, “My father!” and the old man answered trembling, “Is it really you, my son?” And they held each other’s hands, and Yuan felt tears rush to his eyes to see his father’s old face, the nose and mouth and dimmed eyes all somehow bigger than they used to be and too big in the shrunken face. It seemed to Yuan, staring at the face, that this could not be his father, not the Tiger whom he used to fear, whose frowns and black brows were once so terrible, whose sword was never far from his hand, even when he slept. Yet it was the Tiger, for when he knew it was Yuan he called out, “Bring the wine!”
There was a slow stirring and the hare-lipped trusty man, himself aged now, but still his general’s man, came forward, and he gave his greeting to his general’s son, his crooked face beaming, and he poured out wine, while the father took the son’s hand and led him in.
Now did another show himself, and yet another whom Yuan had not seen before, or thought he had not, two grave little prosperous men, one old, one young. The elder was a small, shriveled man, dressed very neatly in an old fashion of long robe of dark grey small-patterned silk, and on his upper body was a sleeved jacket of dull black silk, and on his head a little round silk cap and on it a white cord button denoting mourning for some near relative. About his ankles, too, higher than the black velvet shoes he wore, his trousers were tied with bands of white cotton cloth. Above this sombre garb his small old face peered out, smooth as though he still could not grow a beard, but very wrinkled, his eyes as shining sharp as a weasel’s eyes are.