“The moon is so bright,” he said. “My friend left his room in the dormitory with me and we went out into the street.”
“Don’t tell me you ended at that!” his father shouted.
“We talked awhile and then he went back and I came home,” I-wan said quietly.
“I think you ought to believe I-wan,” his mother said in her sudden hurried way. “You should believe I-wan, because he is a good boy.”
“You always say your sons are good,” his father now shouted at her. “Two months ago I thought something was wrong in the bank. But no, you said, I-ko is so good — I-ko could do no wrong! And so everybody knew but I–I have been made into a fool by my own son!”
He had mimicked his wife’s high soft voice, and she began to cry, and I-ko hung his head again.
“I-ko,” his grandfather commanded him, “sit down!”
I-ko sat down by the table, without looking up.
“Do you know what you have done?” his grandfather inquired. “It seems to me you do not.”
“I don’t think it’s so bad,” I-ko said in a sullen half-whisper.
His father started. “You don’t—” he began.
“Be quiet,” the old man commanded. “I am speaking. I-ko, you have taken a great deal of money that was not yours.”
I-ko did not answer at once. Then he said in the same sullen voice, “It’s not as if my father were not the president of the bank.”
I-wan saw his father set his lips without speaking.
The old man put his hand to his head.
“Do you know whose money is in the bank?” the old man inquired. “It is the money of other people — of many people. There is even government money there. People trust your father. They trusted his son.”
The room was quiet except for the old man’s stern voice.
I-wan thought, “I-ko has done this!”
“Why did you do it, I-ko?” he blurted out. “You always have money.”
He saw I-ko’s eyes steal toward him hostilely, but I-ko did not answer.
“Why did you do it?” his father suddenly bellowed at him. “We have all asked you, and I-wan asks you, too. Have I ever denied you anything? You had only to come and ask me!”
“I didn’t want to ask you,” I-ko answered, goaded.
There was silence to this. They all looked at him. He looked from one to the other of them.
“I–I—” he began. He stopped, then rushed on: “Why do you all look at me so? I–I—I didn’t take it all at once — for any one thing. Tse-li said, ‘Let’s do this — or this’—some little thing — I don’t know — and he hadn’t the money, so he said, ‘I-ko, you always have plenty of cash.’ And they all got to saying that — and I was ashamed to say I hadn’t plenty—” He was half crying again. His smooth hair was falling over his face. He turned on his father. “You — you say, why don’t I ask you — it’s because you scold me — you’re always scolding me — ever since I can remember. I–I’d rather take the money than have to ask you and have you — you yell at me, ‘Again — again!’”
“It’s true,” his mother cried at her husband. “You have always been so harsh to him!”
“And who was to save him otherwise in this house?” his father shouted at her. “A lot of women spoiling him, teaching him to cheat, to lie, by pretending to obey me when I am here! You are to blame — women like you are to blame for all the corruption in the country! Do you think I don’t know? I was a rich man’s son, too — in a house full of women and slaves!”
I-wan said not one word. He had his life elsewhere now, and though this house fell to pieces, he would not fall with it. But when his father said what he did to his mother, he thought with a sort of curiosity of him as a man, to wonder why he was not spoiled, then, as I-ko was. Something had come to save his father just as he himself had been saved by happening upon certain books and then upon En-lan and the band and the men in the mill, and through all of these upon the whole age of revolution which was to come. In a sense the revolution had already saved him.
“What can I do with you, I-ko?” his father asked. His voice changed to sadness. “What can any man do with a worthless son?”
His grandfather spoke.
“Nevertheless he is your son and my grandson, whatever he does. We must return the money. And let us send him abroad to some school where he must work and where he can leave these idle companions.”
I-ko did not speak. But I-wan could see he was waiting to hear what his father said.
“That is the best thing to do,” his mother said in her soft eager way. “No one will know — and so many young men go abroad to study now. It is exactly the thing.”
“Cover it all up — cover it all up,” his father said bitterly. “That is the way — no one need know, and so he will never learn the difference between evil and good!”
“I will never do it again,” I-ko said in a whisper. “I have learned. I will do whatever you say.”
His father rose suddenly.
“Get out of my sight,” he said to I-ko, not loudly, but his voice low and cold. “Put your things together. You will go to Germany — go to a military school and let them see what they can do with you. I will have your ticket bought, or you will spend the money.”
“Yes, that’s right,” the old man agreed, “that’s best. The Germans will teach him.”
“Get away from me,” his father said to I-ko.
Without speaking, I-ko turned away and went out. They heard him cross the hall and the door of his room opened and shut.
In this room nothing was said. Then his grandfather struck a match, lit his cigar at last, and smoked a moment. Until he spoke no one would speak.
“I will go to bed,” he said, and he rose to his feet.
“Let me go with you,” his son said.
“No,” the old man replied. “I can go alone—”
When the door shut behind him, I-wan’s father turned to his mother.
“Will you retire?” he asked.
And she knew he meant she must, so she rose, wiping her eyes, and went into the next room.
Then I-wan was left alone with his father. He had risen while his grandfather and mother left the room.
“Sit down,” his father said. So he sat down, and his father looked at him.
“Will you take your elder brother’s place?” he asked abruptly. He had a small toy in his hand, a paperweight made like a pagoda, and he played with it restlessly. I-wan’s eyes moved to his father’s strong smooth hands. They were powerful hands, though the flesh on them was as soft as Peony’s cheek.
He felt his father near as he had never done before. He felt the depths of his father’s disappointment in I-ko, and that now he needed comfort. He thought, “I wish I could tell my father everything.” But the fear that hangs between the generations would not allow him. He could not forget that his father was the same man he had always been, and that if he did not like a thing he could not comprehend it, however good and right it was. So I-wan held back his desire to confide in him, but still he could not wholly refuse his father. So he said, “Will you let me tell you, Father, at the end of the school year?”
Before then, he thought, it will be another world.
His father stared at him and nodded.
“Let it be, then,” he said. “Now you go away, too. I don’t know why men want sons now-a-days. In the past men had sons for their old age, so that they could be sure of care. But no one can hope for such care now from the young.”