But for once Wang the Landlord sat not moved more than he was, for all her cries and reproaches, for he was frightened to his heart’s bottom to have his son like this in the power of the chief of police. But Wang the Merchant came in very collected and he made his face smooth as though he did not know what was wrong, although the tale was flying everywhere, and being so good and nasty a tale, every servant knew it already and his wife knew it and had told him all and more than all, and she had said with greatest relish, over and over,
“Well I knew no good would come out of that woman’s sons and their father so lustful as he is, too.”
But now Wang the Merchant sat and listened to the tale as it came from the young man’s father and mother, and they made his crime very light, and Wang the Merchant looked judicial and as though he took for granted the young man’s innocence and thought only of some wily way to free him. Well he knew his elder brother wanted to borrow a vast sum, and he planned deeply as to how this could be avoided. When the tale was told and the lady was weeping freely at the end, he said,
“It is true that silver is very useful when dealing with officials anywhere, but there is one thing better still and it is power of arms. Before we spend all we have, let us beseech our brother, who is now a very high general, that he exert himself and use his influence in the provincial court and have a mandate sent down from above to our magistrate here who will command the chief of police to release your son. Then a little silver may be used here and there to help the cause.”
Now this seemed a wonderful and good plan to them all and Wang the Landlord marvelled that it had not come to him, and on that very day and in that very hour he sent a messenger to Wang the Tiger and thus it was that Wang the Tiger heard of it.
Now Wang the Tiger besides the duty he had to help his brothers, saw it was a very good chance to test his power and influence. So he wrote a proper, humble letter to the general of the province and he prepared gifts and he sent all by his trusty man and a guard to keep the gifts safe from robbers. Now that general when he received the gifts and read the letter, pondered awhile, and it seemed to him that here was a useful way to bind Wang the Tiger to him in case of a war and if he did this favor, Wang the Tiger would feel an obligation and it seemed a cheap way to secure this favor by letting a young man out of gaol and he cared nothing at all for so small a fellow as the chief of police in a single town. So he sent the word that Wang the Tiger asked, and then he told the ruler of that province, and the ruler sent a mandate down to the magistrate of the county, who sent his mandate down to the magistrate of the town where the House of Wang lived.
Now Wang the Merchant was more tricky than ever, and he was more clever, and he followed each step with enough silver so that every man who touched the affair felt himself rewarded but still not so much that a greedy spirit might be roused to look twice at the source of so much money. In his turn, the chief of police received the command also and Wang the Landlord and Wang the Second watched very carefully for this moment when it came, for they knew a man will not suffer being put to public shame, and so when they knew he had received the command, they went to him with goodly bribes and with many apologies and they begged the chief of police as though for their own sakes, feigning that they knew nothing of all that had passed from above. No, they made obeisances and they besought him as a man of mercy, and at last he accepted the money carelessly and largely as a man will who confers a favor. Then he ordered the young man released and he reproved him and sent him home.
As for the two brothers, they gave a mighty feast to the chief of police and so the matter was ended, for the young man was free again, and his love somewhat the cooler for the gaol.
But that maid was more willful than ever and she clamored anew to her father. This time he was somewhat more willing, now that he understood how powerful this family of Wang was, and how strong a lord of war one of the three brothers was, and how much money Wang the Merchant had, and he sent a go-between to Wang the Landlord and he said,
“Let us wed these two and seal our new friendship.”
So the matter was carried through and the betrothal was made and the wedding on the first lucky day to be found thereafter and Wang the Landlord and his lady were filled with relief and happiness. As for the bridegroom, although he was somewhat dazed at this sudden turn, yet he felt some of his old ardor return and he was very well content and the maid was full of triumph.
But to Wang the Tiger the whole affair was of no great moment except for this; he knew himself now for a man of power in that province and he knew that the general held him to be one whose favor he wished to hold to himself, and his heart swelled with pride. When this whole matter was finished, the spring had turned well into summer and Wang the Tiger said to himself that since he had been so busy and the year was now so late, he would put off his planned war until yet another year. He did this the more easily, because he was now sure of his position, and yet more easily, because in the beginning of that summer his spies began to return to him and they said that some sort of war was rumored well to the south, but they did not yet know what war it was, nor who its head. When Wang the Tiger heard this he understood fully the value of his army to the provincial general and why he sought to hold his favor. And he waited then for another spring, to see what it would bring forth.
And as always he did, Wang the Tiger spent his life with his son. The lad came and went gravely about his duties and it was Wang the Tiger’s pleasure to watch the lad in his silent way. Often he gazed at his son, and he loved to dwell upon his serious face, half child, half youth. Many a time when he thus studied his son’s face as it bent over some book or task, Wang the Tiger was caught by a strange familiar look in the boy’s high square cheek, or in the firmness of his mouth.
It was not a beautiful mouth, but very firm and fixed for so young a lad.
And it came to Wang the Tiger one night that his son had his look from his grandmother, Wang the Tiger’s own mother. Yes, Wang the Tiger knew it was his mother’s look, although he could only remember her clearly when she lay dying, and the boy’s ruddy face was very different, too, from her pale, dying face. But deeper in Wang the Tiger than any clear memory was some feeling that told him his son moved in his mother’s slow and silent way, and that her gravity was upon his son’s lips and in his eyes. And when Wang the Tiger felt this vague familiar thing in his son, it seemed to warm his heart the more, and he loved his son more deeply yet and for some reason he did not understand he was knit to him yet more closely.
XXVI
NOW THE SON OF Wang the Tiger was such a sort of lad as this; he was faithful in every duty and he did all that he was told to do. He studied to perform the feints of war and the postures that his teachers set before him, and he rode his horse well enough, if not easily as Wang the Tiger did. But the lad did all as though he had no pleasure in any of it and as though he forced himself to everything as a task. When Wang the Tiger asked the tutor how his son did, the tutor answered hesitating,
“I cannot say he does not do well, for he does all well to a point, and he does very exactly what he is told, but beyond that he never goes. It is as though he kept his heart back.”
This answer troubled Wang the Tiger very much for it had seemed to him before this that his son had no good hearty anger in him, and he was never angry and he had neither hatred nor desire in him for anything, but only he went gravely and with patience to all he had to do. Now Wang the Tiger knew that a warrior cannot be so; no, a warrior must have spirit and anger and willfulness in him and a ready passion and he grieved and wondered how to change his son in this.