The boy answered nothing but he stood as his wont was when his father spoke to him and he received his father’s words in perfect silence. And Wang the Tiger looking at the boy’s face tenderly saw no sign of anything he felt there, and he waited awhile and when the lad did not speak but only to say,
“May I leave the room if it is your will?” Wang the Tiger nodded his head and sighed without knowing why he did, or even that he sighed.
Thus Wang the Tiger taught and admonished his son and he saw to it that every hour of the boy’s life, beyond eating and sleeping, was filled with some learning or other. He made the boy rise early and practice his feints of war with the trusty men and when he had finished and had eaten his early meal he spent the morning with his books and when he had eaten again the new young tutor took him for the afternoon and taught him every kind of thing.
Now this new tutor was a young man such as Wang the Tiger had never seen before. He wore western clothes of war and spectacles upon his nose, and he had a very straight, swift body. He could run and leap and fence, and he knew how to set fire to all kinds of foreign weapons of war. Some he held in his hand and threw and they burst into flames, and some he fired like a gun with hand on a trigger, and there were many other kinds. And Wang the Tiger sat by as his son learned all these ways of war, and although the Tiger would not have said it, he learned of many things he himself had never even seen or heard of, and it came to him that it was a small thing to have been so proud of those two old foreign guns, and the only great guns he had. Yes, he saw he knew very little even of war, since there was more to know than he had dreamed, and now he would often sit far into the night talking to his son’s new tutor, and he learned of all sorts of clever ways of killing, the death from the air that drops down upon men, and the death that is in the bowels of the sea and comes up to kill, and the death that can fly more miles than men can see and drop and burst upon an enemy. Wang the Tiger listened to this in greatest wonder and he said,
“I see the people of the outer countries are very clever at killing and I did not know it.”
Then he began to ponder it all and one day he said to the tutor,
“I have a good rich territory in my hand and we do not have a complete famine more than once in ten or fifteen years, and I have a little silver put together. Now I see I have been too satisfied with my men, and I see that if my son is to learn all these new ways of war he must have an army skilled in such things, too. I will buy some of these machines that are used for war now-a-days in outer countries, and you shall teach my men and shape an army fit for my son when he comes to it.”
The young man smiled his quick and flashing smile and he was very willing and he said,
“I have tried to teach your men, but the discourteous truth is that they are a very ragged straggling lot and too content to eat and drink. If you will buy some new machines and if you will set hours of the day when they shall march and learn, I will see if they are to be shaped.”
Now Wang the Tiger was displeased secretly at such discourteous truth, for he had put many days of his life into teaching his men, and he said stiffly,
“You must teach my son first.”
“I will teach him until he is fifteen,” said the young tutor, “and then if you will permit me to advise one so high as you, I will say he should be sent to a school of war in the south.”
“What, can men learn war in a school?” said Wang the Tiger wondering.
“There is such a school,” replied the young tutor, “and such as come out of it are captains at once in the state’s army.”
But Wang the Tiger grew haughty at this and he said, “My son has no need to go and search for some little captain’s place in the state army as though he had not an army of his own,” and after a while Wang the Tiger said again, “Besides, I doubt if any good thing can come out of the south. I served under a southern general in my youth and he was an idle, lustful creature, and his soldiers little monkeys of men.”
The tutor, seeing Wang the Tiger was displeased, smiled and took his departure and Wang the Tiger sat on and he thought of his son and it seemed to him that surely he had done everything for his son that could be done. And he searched his heart painfully to remember his youth and he remembered that he had longed once for a horse of his own. The very next day therefore he bought a little black horse for his son, a strong good beast from the plains of Mongolia, and he bought it from a horse dealer whom he knew.
But when he gave it to the boy, and he called him out to see what he had for him, and there the little black horse stood in the court, a red saddle of new leather upon his back, and a red bridle studded with brass, and the groom who held the horse and whose sole duty was to tend it from this day on had in his hand a new whip of red braided leather. Wang the Tiger thought to himself proudly that it was such a horse as he himself might have dreamed of as a lad and thought too good to be alive, and he looked eagerly at his son to catch the pleasure that must break into his eyes and smile.
But the boy did not come out of his gravity at all. He looked at the horse and said, composed as he always was,
“My thanks, my father.”
And Wang the Tiger waited, but no light came into the boy’s eyes, and he did not leap forward to seize the bridle nor to try the saddle, and he seemed waiting to be allowed to go away.
Then Wang the Tiger turned away in furious disappointment and he went into his room and shut the door and he sat down and held his head in his hands and yearned over his son with anger and with bitterness of unrewarded love. But when he had grieved awhile he hardened himself again in his old way and he said stubbornly,
“Yet what more can he want? He has all I dreamed of when I was his age and more than I dreamed. Yes, what would I not have given for a teacher so skilled as he has, and for a fine foreign gun such as he has, and now a little shining black horse and the saddle and bridle red, and a red whip set into a silver handle!”
Thus he comforted himself, and he commanded the lad’s tutor to spare no teaching of this son of his, and not to heed the languors that the boy might have, for these are common to all lads who grow, and they cannot be heeded.
But at night when Wang the Tiger woke up and was restless he heard his son’s quiet breathing in the room and a suffering tenderness filled his breast and he thought to himself over and over,
“I must do more for him — I must think of something more I can do for him!”
Thus did Wang the Tiger spend his years upon his son and he might have slipped all unknowing into age, so engrossed was he, had not a certain thing come about that shook him out of his too great fondness and stirred him up to war again, and to his destiny.
It was on a day in spring when his son was nearly ten years old, for so did Wang the Tiger measure the years now by his son, and he sat under a budding pomegranate tree with the boy. The lad had been rapt before the little flame-like new leaves of the tree and he had cried out suddenly,
“I do swear that to me these little fiery leaves are more beautiful than the whole flower, even!”
Wang the Tiger was looking at them, painstaking in his attention to see what his son saw if he could, when there came a great commotion at the gates and one came running to Wang the Tiger to announce someone coming. But before the serving man could get the words from his mouth Wang the Tiger saw his pocked nephew come staggering in, lame from his swift riding, and he was haggard and weary with his riding by night and day, and the dust had settled into his deep pocks so that he was very curious to see. Words came slowly to Wang the Tiger so long as he was not angry and he could but stare at the young man and the young man gasped forth,