“Yes, they went away when they had everything,” the man replied, and then he wept again and said, “But the great house — the great house — it is burned and empty! The tenants did it — they helped the robbers, the tenants, who ought to have joined to save us — they have taken it all from us — the good house our grandfather — they say they will take back the land, too, and divide it — I heard it said — but who dares go to see what the truth is?”
When Yuan heard this it smote him almost more than what his father suffered. Now would they be robbed indeed, he and his house, if they had no land left. He rose heavily, dazed by what was come about.
“I will go at once to my father,” he said — and then after further thought he said, “As for you, you are to go to the coastal city and to this house whose directions I will write for you, and there find my father’s lady and tell her I am gone ahead, and let her come if she will to her lord.”
So Yuan decided and when the man had eaten and was on his way Yuan started the same day for his father.
All the two days and nights upon the train it seemed this must be only an evil story out of some old ancient book. It was not possible, Yuan told himself, in these new times, that such an ancient evil thing had happened. He thought of the great ordered peaceful coastal city where Sheng lived out his idle pleasant days, where Ai-lan lived secure and careless and full of her pretty laughter and ignorant — yes, as ignorant of such tales as these as that white woman was who lived ten thousand miles away. … He sighed heavily and stared out of the window.
Before he left the new city he had gone and found Meng and took him aside into a teahouse corner, and told him what had happened, and this he did in some faint hope that Meng would be angry for his family’s sake and cry he would come too, and help his cousin.
But Meng did not. He listened and he lifted his black brows and he argued thus, “I suppose the truth is my uncles have oppressed the people. Well, let them suffer, then. I will not share their suffering who have not shared their sin.” And he said further, “You are foolish, to my thought. Why should you go and risk your life for an old man who may be dead already? What has your father ever done for you? I care nothing for any of them.” Then he looked at Yuan awhile, who sat silent and wistful and helpless in this new trouble, and Meng, who was not wholly hard in heart, leaned and put his hand on Yuan’s as it lay on the table and he made his voice low and said, “Come with me, Yuan! Once before you came, but not with your heart — join now and truly in our new good cause — This time it is the real revolution!”
But Yuan, though he let his hand lie, shook his head. And at this Meng took his hand off abruptly and he rose and said, “Then this is farewell. When you come back, I shall be gone. It may be we meet no more …” Sitting in the train, Yuan remembered how Meng looked, how tall and brave and impetuous he looked in his soldier’s uniform, and how quickly when he said these words, he was gone.
The train swayed on its way through the afternoon. Yuan sighed and looked about him. There were the travellers who seem always the same on any train, fat merchants wrapped in silk and fur, the soldiers, the students, mothers with their crying children. But across the aisle from his seat were two young men, brothers, who were, it could be seen, newly come home from foreign parts. Their clothes were new and cut in the newest foreign way, loose short trousers and long bright-colored stockings and leather shoes of a yellow color, and on their upper bodies they wore thick garments of knitted yarn, and on their breasts were sewed foreign letters, and their leather bags were shining and new. They laughed easily and spoke freely in the foreign tongue and one had a foreign lute he strummed, and sometimes they sang a foreign song together and all the people listened astonished at the noise. What they said Yuan understood very well, but he made no sign of understanding for he was too weary and downhearted for any talk. Once when the train stopped he heard one say to the other, “The sooner we get the factories started the better it will be, for then we can get these wretched creatures at work.” And once he heard the other rail against the serving man for the blackness of the rag he hung across his shoulder with which he wiped the tea bowls, and they both threw fiery looks at the merchant who sat next to Yuan when he coughed and spat upon the floor.
These things Yuan saw and understood, for so had he spoken and felt once, too. But now he watched the fat man cough and cough and spit at last upon the floor and he let it be. Now he could see it and feel no shame nor outrage, but only let it be. Yes, though he could not so do himself, he could let others do as they would these days. He could see the serving man’s black rag and not cry out against it, and he could bear at least in silence the filth of vendors at the stations. He was numbed and yet he did not know why he was, except it seemed without hope to change so many people. Yet he knew he could not be like Sheng and live for his pleasures only, nor like Meng and forget his old duty to his father. Better for him, if he could, doubtless, be wholly new and careless as they were each in his own way and see nothing they did not like to see, and feel no tie which was irksome. But he was as he was, and his father was his father still. He could not so lay aside his duty to that old which was his own past, too, and still somehow part of him. And so he went patiently to the long journey’s end.
The train stopped at last at the town near the earthen house, and Yuan descended and he walked through the town quickly, and though he stayed to see nothing, he could not fail to see it was a town which robbers bad possessed not long since. The people were silent and frightened, and here and there were burned houses, and only now did the owners who were left dare to come and survey ruefully the ruins. But Yuan went straight through the chief street, not stopping at all to see the great house, and he passed out of the other gate and turned across the fields towards the hamlet he remembered and so he came again to the earthen house.
Once again he stooped to enter the middle room upon whose walls he saw his young verses still as he brushed them. But he could not stay to see how they seemed to him now; he called, and two came to his call, and one was the old tenant, now withered and toothless and very near his end and alone, for his old wife was dead already, and the other was the aged trusty man. These two cried out to see Yuan, and the old trusty man seized Yuan’s hand without a word, not even bowing to him as to his young lord, he was in such haste, and he led him into the inner room where Yuan had slept before, and there on the bed the Tiger lay.
He lay long and stiff and still, but not dead, for his eyes were fixed, and he kept muttering something to himself continually. When he saw Yuan he showed no surprise at all. Instead, like a piteous child, he held up his two old hands and said simply, “See my two hands!” And Yuan looked at the two old mangled hands and cried out, agonized, “Oh, my poor father!” Then the old man seemed for the first time to feel the pain and the cloudy tears gathered in his eyes and he whimpered a little and said, “They hurt me—” And Yuan soothed him and touched the old man’s swollen thumbs delicately and said over and over, “I know they do — I am sure they do—”
And he began to weep silently, and so did the old man, and so the two wept together, father and son.
Yet what could Yuan do beyond weeping? He saw the Tiger was very near his death. A dreadful yellow pallor was on his flesh, and even while he wept his breath came so short that Yuan was frightened and besought him to be tranquil, and forced himself not to weep. But the Tiger had another trouble to tell and he cried again to Yuan, “They took my good sword—” Then his lips trembled afresh, and he would have put his hand to them in the old habit he had, but the hand pained him if he moved it, and so he let it lie, and looked up at Yuan as he was.