“Are you in a fever or something?”
But the small hand was cool and moist and the boy shook his head, and he would answer nothing for a long time even though Wang the Tiger forced him and he called for his harelipped trusty man at last to help him with his son. When the man was come Wang the Tiger was so torn with his anxiety and his fear and some anger, too, because the child was so stubborn, that he shouted to the man,
“Take this young fool out and see what you can find wrong with him!”
By now the boy sobbed desperately and he had put his head down on his arms to sob and hide his face, and Wang the Tiger sat there angry and near to weeping himself and his face worked and he pulled at his beard. Then the trusty man lifted the child in his arms and took him away somewhere and Wang the Tiger waited in agony for awhile, staring at the boy’s untasted bowl. When the man came back again but without the child, Wang the Tiger roared at him,
“Speak out and tell me all!”
Then half hesitating the man answered,
“There is no illness in him at all, and he only cannot eat because he is so lonely. He has never lived alone before and without a child and he longs for his mother and for his sisters.”
“But at his age he cannot play and idle his time away and with women,” said Wang the Tiger, half beside himself, and he tore at his beard and twisted himself in his seat.
“No,” said the man calmly, for he knew his master’s temper and did not fear him, “but he might return sometimes to see his mother, or his sister might come a few times to play, since they are both but children still, and by such means the parting might be eased for the lad, else he will be ill.”
Then Wang the Tiger sat silent awhile and he sat and suffered such mortal jealousy as he had never suffered before since that woman whom he had killed came back to torture him because she had loved the dead robber better than him. But now it was jealousy because his son did not love him wholly and longed for others than his father, and Wang the Tiger suffered because while he found his joy and pride in his son, his son was not content with even so great a love, nor did he value it, and for all he was surrounded with his father’s love, he yearned for a woman. And Wang the Tiger said to himself violently that he hated all women and he rose out of his seat passionately and he shouted at the trusty man saying,
“Let him go then, if he is such a weakling! What do I care what he does if he is to be a son, after all, such as my brothers have?”
But the trusty man answered gently,
“My general, you forget he is only a little child.”
And Wang the Tiger sat down again and groaned awhile and said, “Well, did I not tell you let him go?”
Thereafter once in five days or so the boy went into his mother’s court, and every time he went Wang the Tiger sat and gnawed his beard until the boy came back and then he questioned him this way and that as to what he had seen and heard, and he said,
“What were they doing there?”
And the boy made answer always, half startled by the passion in his father’s eyes, “Nothing, my father.”
But Wang the Tiger would persist and he cried, “Were they gaming or sewing or what? Women do not sit at nothing unless they gossip, and that is something, too!”
Then the boy put his mind to it and he knit his brows and made painstaking, slow answer,
“My mother cut out a little coat for my youngest sister out of some red flowered cloth, and my eldest sister, whose mother is not mine, sat and read a book to show how well she could do it. I like her better than my other sisters, because she understands when I speak to her and does not laugh at nothing as they do. She has very big eyes and her hair comes below her waist when it is braided now. But she never reads very long. She is restless and she likes to talk.”
This pleased Wang the Tiger and he said with pleasure, “So all women are and they are given to talking about nothing!”
It was the strangest jealousy in Wang the Tiger’s heart, for it drew him still further away from those others of his own household and he went more and more seldom to either of his wives. And indeed it looked as time went on as if this lad was to be his only son, for Wang the Tiger’s learned wife had never any more children than the one daughter, and the ignorant wife had two daughters, some years apart, and it came to be, that whether Wang the Tiger was not hot in his blood and had no great taste for women, or whether the love of his son made him content, he went at last no more to the courts of his wives. Partly it was some strange shame in him that after his son came to sleep in his room with him he was ashamed for the lad’s sake to rise and go out at night to a woman. No, as time went on Wang the Tiger did not, as many lords of war do when they grow rich and strong, fill their courts with feasting and with women. His treasure he poured into guns and more guns and soldiers, except the certain sum he laid by and increased steadily against the time when some disaster might befall him, and he lived sternly and simply and alone except for his son.
Sometimes, and it was the only woman who ever came into their courts, Wang the Tiger let his eldest daughter come in to play with his son, her brother. The first time or two her mother brought her there and she sat for a moment or so. But Wang the Tiger was very ill at ease to have her there, the more because he felt this woman reproached him for something or even that she yearned for something from him, and suffered under some loss he did not understand, and so he rose and went away with a few courteous words to explain his going. At last it seemed she ceased to expect anything from him and he saw her no more, and a slave brought the girl in to play at the rare times when she came.
But in a year or two even the girl came no more, and the mother sent word that she took her daughter to some school for learning, and Wang the Tiger was glad, because the girl came into the austere courts where he lived and she disturbed him because she wore so bright a coat and because she thrust a red pomegranate flower into her hair or a white jasmine that was very fragrant and she loved best of all to put a spray of cassia flowers into her braid, and Wang the Tiger could not bear cassia flowers, because the scent was so sweet and hot and he hated such scent. She was too merry, too, and willful and domineering and all the things he hated in a woman, and he hated most of all the light and laughter in his son’s eyes and the smiles upon his lips when his sister came. She alone could stir him into gayety and to running and play about the court.
Then Wang the Tiger felt his heart close in possession about his son and his heart closed against his daughter, and the faint impulse he had felt toward her when she had been a babe was gone now that she grew into a slender girl, and into the promise of a woman, and he was glad when her mother prepared to send her away and he gave silver freely and readily and he did not begrudge it at all, for now he had his son to himself.
He made haste before his son could be lonely again to fill his life full with many things and he said to his son,
“Son, we are men, you and I, and now cease to go into your mother’s courts except at those times when it is fitting to pay respect to her, for it is a very subtle easy way to waste a life with women, even with mother or sister, for they are still but women and still ignorant and foolish. I would have you learn every sort of soldier’s skill, now, both old and new. My trusty men can teach you all you need to know of old, the Pig Butcher how to use fist and foot, and the harelipped one how to wield sword and staff. And for the new ways I have heard of and never seen, I have sent to the coast and hired a new tutor for you, who learned his ways of war in foreign countries, and he knows every sort of foreign weapon and way of war. He is to teach you first and what time besides he has left he is to teach our army.”