A House Divided (6 page)

His heart hurried him. Before dawn came he rose leaping up and shouted for the servant in the inn to fetch him hot water to wash himself and he took off his clothes and shook them well to rid them of the vermin, and when the man came he cursed him for such filth and was all eagerness to be gone.

When the serving man saw Yuan’s impatience he knew him for a rich man’s son, for the poor dare not curse so easily, and he grew obsequious and made haste, and so by dawn Yuan was fed and off, leading his red horse to sell. This poor beast he sold for very little at a butcher’s shop. A moment’s pang Yuan had, it is true, for he shrank a little to think his horse must be turned into food for men, but then he hardened himself against this softness. He had no need for horses now. He was no longer a general’s son. He was himself, Wang Yuan, a young man free to go where he would and do what he liked. And that very day he mounted into the train that took him to the great coastal city.

It was a lucky thing for Yuan that he had sometimes read to his father the letters which the Tiger’s learned wife sent him from that coastal city where she had gone to live. The Tiger as he was older grew more indolent about reading anything, so that, although as a youth he had read very well, in his age he had forgotten many letters and did not read with ease. Twice a year the letters came from this lady to her lord, and she wrote a very learned sort of writing which was not easy to read, and Yuan read the letters to his father and explained them. Now remembering, he could remember where she said she lived, in what street and in what part of that great city. So when at the end of a day and a night Yuan came down off that train, having crossed a river on the way and skirted by a lake or two and passed through many mountains and through much good planted land whereon the spring wheat was sprouting, he knew where he must go. It was not very near to where he was and so he hired a ricksha to pull him there, and thus he went through the lighted city streets alone and to his own adventure, and as he went he stared about him as freely as any farmer might, since no one knew him.

Never had he been in such a city as this was. For the houses rose so high on the sides of the streets that even with all the blazing lights he could not see their tops which ended somewhere in the darkness of the sky. But at the foot of the towering houses where Yuan was it was bright enough, and the people walked as though in the light of day. He saw the people of the world here, for they were of every race and kind and color; he saw black men from India and their women wrapped about with cloth of gold and with pure white muslin and with scarlet robes to set off their dark beauty. And he saw the swift-moving shapes of white women and their men with them all dressed the same always, and all their noses long, so that Yuan looking at the men wondered how these women told their husbands from other men, they looked so much the same except some were big-bellied or hairless on their scalps or had some other such lack in beauty.

Still most of the people were his own kind, and Yuan saw every sort of countryman of his upon these streets. There were the rich, who came riding in great machines to the door of some pleasure house, and they drove up with the great shrieking noise of horns, and Yuan’s ricksha man must draw aside and wait until they passed, as in the old days kings might have passed. Where the rich were, there were the poor beside them, the beggars and the maimed and the diseased who made much of their woes to gain a little silver. But it was hardly gained, and the silver leaked from the purses of the rich in very small scanty pieces, for usually the rich passed on their way, their noses high and their eyes unseeing. In all his eagerness for pleasure, Yuan could feel a moment’s hatred of these haughty rich, and he thought they ought to give a little to the beggars.

Through all this moving multitude Yuan went obscure enough in his humble vehicle until the man stopped panting before a certain gate set in a long wall, and like a score of other gates on either side. This was the place Yuan sought and so he came down and fetched out the coins he had promised to the man and gave them to him. Now Yuan had seen with indignation how little those rich men and ladies had heeded the cries of the beggars and how they had pushed past the scrawny hands thrust out before them. Yet when this working man cried humbly, trembling and sweating with his running, “Sir, add a little out of the kindness of your heart,” for he had noted Yuan’s robe of silk and his well-fed looks, it did not seem the same thing to Yuan at all. He did not feel himself rich and it is known that these men who pull at rickshas never are content. So he cried stoutly, “Is not the price agreed?” And the man answered, sighing, “Oh, aye, it is the price agreed—but I thought from your kind heart—”

But Yuan had forgotten the man. He turned to the gate and pressed a bell he saw there. Then the man seeing himself forgotten, sighed again and wiped his hot face with a filthy cloth he had about his neck and wandered down the street, shivering in the keen night wind which turned his sweat to ice upon his flesh.

When the manservant came to open the gate, he stared at Yuan as at a stranger and for a while would not let him in, because in that city there were many well-dressed strangers who rang at gates and said they were friends and relatives of those who lived there, and when they were bidden to come in they drew out foreign guns and robbed and killed and did what they would, and sometimes their fellows came and helped them and they seized a child or man and took him away to hold for ransom. So the servant quickly barred the gate again, and although Yuan cried out what his name was, there he must wait awhile. Then once more the gate opened, and this time he saw a lady there, a quiet grave-faced lady, large and white-haired, her robe of some dark plum-hued satin. Yuan looked at her as she looked at him, and he saw her face was kind, a full pale face, not wrinkled much, but never beautiful, since the mouth was too large and the nose large and flat between the eyes. Still the eyes were kind and comprehending and Yuan took courage, and he smiled a little in shyness and he said, “I need to ask your pardon that I come like this, lady, but I am Wang Yuan, the Tiger’s son, and I have left my father. I ask nothing from you except, since I am alone, that I may come in and see you and my sister.”

The lady had been looking at him very closely as he spoke, and she said mildly, “I could not believe the man when he said it was you. It has been so long since I saw you that I would not know you, except you are so like your father. Yes, none could fail to see you are the Tiger’s son. Come in, then, and be at home.”

And though the servant looked still doubtful the lady urged Yuan to come in and she was so mild and placid that she seemed not surprised at all, or in truth as though anything on this earth could surprise her now. No, she led him into a narrow hall, and then she bade the servant make a room ready with a bed in it, and asked Yuan if he had eaten and she opened a door into a guest hall, and asked him to be seated there and at his ease while she went to fetch certain things for his comfort in the room the servant made ready for him. All this she did so easily and with such ready welcome that Yuan was pleased and warmed and felt himself a welcome guest at last, and this was very sweet to him, wearied as he was with what had come about between his father and himself.

In this guest hall he sat himself down upon an easy chair and waited wondering, for it was not such a room as he had ever seen, but, as his way was, showing no wonder or excitement on his grave face. He sat quietly, wrapped in his long robe of dark silk, looking a little about the room, yet looking not so much that if one came in he would be surprised at such a thing, for he was of a nature which hated to seem strange or ill at ease in any new place. It was a small, square room and very clean, so clean that on the floor a flowered woolen cloth was spread, and even this had no soil upon it. In the center of this cloth a table stood, and on the table another cloth of red velvet, and in this center a pot of pink paper flowers, very real to see, except the leaves were silver and not green. There were six chairs such as the one he sat on, soft in the seat and covered with pink satin. At the windows were hung white strips of fine cloth, and on the wall was hung a picture of a foreign sort behind a pane of glass. This picture showed high mountains very blue, a lake as blue, and on the mountains foreign houses such as he had not seen. It was very bright and pretty to the eye.

Suddenly a bell rang somewhere, and Yuan turned his head to the door. He heard quick footsteps, and then a girl’s voice high and full of laughter. He listened. It could be perceived she spoke to someone, although he heard no answering voice, and many words she used he scarcely understood, ripples interspersed of some foreign tongue.

“Ah, it is you?—No, I am not busy—Oh, I am tired today, I danced so late last night—You are teasing me—She is much prettier than I—You laugh at me—She dances much better than I do—even the white men want to dance with her—Yes, it is true I did dance with the young American—Ah, how he can dance—I will not tell you what he said!—No, no, no!—Then I will go with you tonight—ten o’clock! I will have dinner first—”

He heard a pretty rill of laughter and suddenly the door opened and he saw a girl there, and he rose to bow, his eyes dropped down in courtesy, avoiding a direct look at her. But she ran forward swiftly, graceful as a darting swallow and as quick, her hands outstretched. “You are my brother Yuan!” she cried gaily in her little soft voice, a voice high and floating seemingly upon the air. “My mother said you were here all of a sudden—” She seized his hands and laughed. “How old-fashioned you are in that long robe! Shake hands like this—everybody shakes hands now!”

He felt her small smooth hand seize his, and he pulled his own away, too shy to bear it—staring at her while he did it. She laughed again and sat down on the arm of a chair and turned her face up at him, the prettiest little face, three-cornered as a kitten’s, the black hair smooth and curled upon her rounded cheeks. But it was her eyes that held him, the brightest, blackest eyes shot through with light and laughter, and beneath them was her red little mouth, the lips very full and red and yet small and delicate.

“Sit down,” she cried, a little imperious queen.

He sat then, very carefully upon the edge of a chair, not near her, and she laughed again.

“I am Ai-lan,” she went on in her light fluttering voice. “Do you remember me? I remember you so well. Only you have grown up better than you were—you used to be an ugly little boy—your face so long. But you must have some new clothes—all my cousins wear foreign clothes now—you would look nice in them—so tall! Can you dance? I love to dance. Do you know our cousins? My eldest cousin’s wife dances like a fairy! You should see my old uncle! He’d like to dance, but he is so old and hugely fat, and my aunt won’t let him. You should see him when she scolds him for staring at pretty girls!” Again she laughed her restless, flying laughter.

Yuan stole a look at her. She was slighter than any creature he had ever seen, as small as any child about the body, and her green silk robe fitted as tightly to her as a calyx to a bud, the collar high and close about her slender neck, and in her ears were little rings of pearls and gold. He looked away and coughed a little behind his hand.

“I came to pay my respects to our mother and to you,” he said.

She smiled at this, mocking his sedateness, a smile that set her face twinkling, and she rose and went to the door, her step so swift it seemed like a light running.

“I’ll go and find her, brother,” she said, making her voice solemn to mock his. Then she laughed again and flung a teasing look at him from out her black kitten’s eyes.

The room was very quiet with her going, as though a little busy wind had suddenly ceased to blow in it. Yuan sat astonished, not able to comprehend this girl. She was not like anyone he had ever seen in all his soldier’s life. He set his brain to remember how she was when they were small together before his father made him leave his mother’s court. He remembered this same swiftness, this prattle, this darting of her great black eyes. He remembered, too, how dull his days had seemed at first without her, how lifeless were his father’s courts. Remembering it, even now this room seemed too quiet and lonely and he wished she would come back to it, and he was eager to see her more, because he wanted more of laughter like hers. Suddenly he thought again how his whole life long had been without laughter, always filled with a duty of some kind or other, and how he had never play and merriment such as any poor child has upon the street and such as any crowd of laboring men has if they stop a moment to rest in the sunshine of noon and eat their food together. His heart beat a little quickly. What had this city for him, what laughter and what gaiety such as all young men must love, what new shining life?

When the door sounded again, therefore, he looked eagerly towards it but now it was not Ai-lan. It was the lady, and she came in quietly and as one who made her house ready and full of good ease and comfort for all. Behind her came the serving man bearing on a tray some bowls of hot food, and she said, “Set the food here. Now, Yuan, you must eat a little more if you would please me, for I know the food upon the trains is not like this. Eat, my son—for you are my son, Yuan, since I have had no other, and I am glad you have sought me out, and I want you to tell me everything and how you are come here.”

When Yuan heard this good lady speak kindly and when he saw her face honest in its look and meaning and when he heard her comfortable voice and saw the inviting look her little mild eyes had when she put a chair for him beside a table, he felt foolish tears come to his eyes. Never, he thought passionately within himself, had such gentle welcome been made for him anywhere—no, no one was so kind to him as this. Suddenly the warmth of this house, the gayness of the colors of the room, the remembered laughter of Ai-lan, the comfort of this lady, rose up and wrapped him round. He ate eagerly, for he found himself very hungry and the food was seasoned carefully and not scant of fat or sauces as foods are when they are bought, and Yuan, forgetting how once he had eaten eagerly of country fare, thought now this was the best, most heartening food he ever ate, and he ate his fill. Yet he was quickly satisfied because the dishes were so fat and highly seasoned, and he could eat no more in spite of all the lady’s urging.