Читать книгу Wang the Ninth - B. L. Putnam Weale - Страница 11

Table of Contents

Soon after this his father began using him to carry his rudely fashioned iron-ware into the city, where it was handed over to middlemen who scrutinized every place with the eyes of hawks and who paid a mere pittance for this labour of sweat and tears. The boy, however, cared nothing for the business details, although he mechanically cursed the rapacity of the city-bred as his father did. He was conscious, however, that the middlemen, in their long respectable blue coats, were an essential element in the system which held them up. They represented credit. When it was known that he and his father were working on a job of so many hundred iron-nails, or so many flanges, the neighbourhood gave them credit for the amount they would earn, and they could eat in peace. Each time he carried a heavily-laden hemp sack with a completed order to the middlemen, his father would partially settle their local debts. Sometimes on the big settlement-days (which came three times a year) there would be trouble and blows because their accounts were in arrears. Then the boy would avoid every one and sit apart hanging his head, for he vaguely knew that his father's respectability was not what it should be.

What enchanted him in the city was the freedom and bustle. Although his errands were within easy reach of the city gate, he so contrived it that he went far afield, running all the way home so as to have ample time to loaf and stare. For a long while the glamour of mingling with the crowds and gazing into the handsome shops, and watching craftsmen at work was enough to keep him interested. He became familiar with the wealth of a city that was mighty in those days because it drained the provinces and because everybody was provided against want. There were princes and princesses abroad accompanied by handsome bands of retainers, who drove the common people off the driving-road as if they were mere carrion crows. He liked the insolence of their manners which was in keeping with his conception of the rules of a nation; and very often he ran alongside a great red-wheeled princely cart to show his esteem—until he was driven off with a crack of the whip. Now that he had seen with his own eyes the emperor and the empress mother, he found it only just and reasonable that those who were of the blood royal should act as though the world were their property. That was how he liked it: at least there should be some who could do as they liked and to whom riches meant nothing at all.

One day a demon possessed him to go to a Temple Fair which was held every tenth day of the month and which attracted great multitudes of people. He had always wanted to go but his father had refused to give him money. Now he had the opportunity. In the noise and excitement of that closely-packed throng he lost his head, and after a short mental struggle began coolly spending the coins he had received in payment for his father's work. He tasted sweetmeats which brought tears of joy to his eyes, and he bought clever toys of bamboo and coloured paper which enchanted him. The little stock of copper cash was half-spent before he realized what he had done, and, at length, stricken with alarm, he walked home slowly and hesitatingly.

His father was sitting at the door of his hut, smoking and waiting for him after his wont. Directly he saw him his father cursed him for being so slow. The boy frowned hard as he approached; yet in spite of his fear he dealt with the matter with his curious bluntness and directness. Seating himself on his heels he counted out what was left of the money and then heavily sighed.

"I have spent more than half," he announced with grim resolution. "I wandered to the Fair, and because there were many things to buy and others had money to spend I spent too."

His father rose furiously, with a clumsy threatening gesture.

"Whose money was it you carried?" he asked. "Whose money, I say?"

"Yours," answered his son sullenly because he was offended now. "But I have given you the reason and I will repay in due course from what I earn."

"Come here," commanded the father, sweeping all his excuses aside.

The boy hesitated. His father picked up a heavy tool. The boy was caught between a feeling of filial duty which was intense and deep among the people and a new feeling of independence.

"You would strike me with that?" he asked, frowning hard.

"Come here," shouted his father again, and that shout decided him.

"No," he said, folding his arms. "I shall not come."

"Little son of a toad," shouted the infuriated man, rushing at him. "I will teach you, I will teach you."

He swung up the heavy tool, but the boy dived with amazing dexterity, and then ran backwards. Again and again the father aimed blows that would have murdered him, but always missed. Then the growing crowd that had gathered flung themselves in between the two and held the infuriated man shouting in their arms. The father's hysteria mounted higher and higher: the pent-up wrong of ten years ago surged out from his mouth.

"Son of a harlot, come here, that I may slay you," he shrieked at last, wrestling like a maniac. At that the boy turned to a deathly hue,—under his bronzed face.

"Enough," he cried thickly, "I came here from afar with you and now I go again. Never shall I return."

He turned with a clumsy dramatic gesture; looked round once to see that he was not followed, and then running quickly towards the city gate was lost in the throng.

The crowd released the father. All talked volubly all the time. This was a business which must be amicably settled. But the father never answered. He made a hesitating step or two like a drunken man, then reeled to the door of his hut which he opened and slammed behind him.

The wondering crowd, consumed with curiosity, only slowly dispersed. This outbreak was of the stuff that made up their daily lives. It was in the air, always lurking half-hidden behind the blue-cotton exterior of their monotonous existence, coming in sudden storms. Swift, well-recognized and very often fatal to the weak, but nevertheless accepted as something which comes directly from Heaven.