Sons by Pearl S. Buck Page B

always a war somewhere he had had nothing to do with wars except once when in a revolution soldiers had been quartered in his father’s house, and he knew nothing of how war is begun or waged except that if it is waged too near the prices of grain are high and if it is distant then prices fall again. He had never been so near a war as this, even in his own family was this war! His narrow mouth gaped and his small eyes widened and he whispered back, “But what can I do to help in this, who am so peaceful a man as I am?”
    “This!” said Wang the Tiger and his whisper was the grating of iron upon iron. “I must have much silver, all my own, and I must borrow of you and at the least interest you will give me until I can establish myself!”
    “But what security?” said Wang the Second, breathless.
    “This!” said Wang the Tiger again. “You are to lend me what I need and what the land will bring until I can gather a mighty army and I will establish myself somewhere north of our own region and I will make myself lord of that whole territory! Then when I am lord I will enlarge myself and my lands, and I shall grow greater and more great with every war I wage until—” He paused and seemed to look off into some distant age, into some distant country, as though he saw it plain before him, and Wang the Second waited and then could not wait.
    “Until what?” he said.
    Wang the Tiger rose suddenly to his feet. “Until there is none greater than I in this whole nation!” he said, and now his whisper was like a shout.
    “What will you be then?” asked Wang the Second astounded.
    “I shall be what I will!” cried Wang the Tiger, and his black brows flew up over his eyes suddenly and sharply and he smote the table with the flat of his hand so that Wang the Second leaped at the crack, and the two men stared at each other.
    Now all this was the strangest thing of which Wang the Second had ever heard. He was not a man who could dream great dreams and his greatest dream was to sit down at night with his books of accounts and look over what he had sold that year and plan in what safe sure ways he could enlarge himself the next year in his markets. Now, therefore, he sat and stared at this brother of his and he saw him tall and black and strange and his eyes shining like a tiger’s eyes, and those straight black brows like banners above his eyes. Thus staring Wang the Second was lifted out of himself so that he was afraid of his brother and he did not dare to say anything to thwart him for there was a look in the man’s eyes that was half crazed and it was so mighty a look that even Wang the Second could feel in his pinched heart the power of this man, his brother. Still he was cautious, though, and still he could not forget his habit of caution, and so he coughed dryly and said in his little dry voice.
    “But what is there in all this for me and for us all and what security if I lend my silver to you?”
    And Wang the Tiger answered with majesty, and he brought his eyes back to rest upon his brother,
    “Do you think I will forget my own when I have raised myself up and are not you my brothers and your sons my brothers’ sons? Did you ever hear of a mighty lord of war who did not raise up all his house as he rose? Is it nothing to you to be the brother of— a king ?”
    And he gazed down into his brother’s eyes, and Wang the Second suddenly half believed this brother of his, although unwillingly too, for all this was the strangest tale he had ever heard, and he said in his sensible way,
    “At least I will give you what is your own and I will lend you what I can spare, if it be that indeed you can rise like this, for doubtless there are many who do not rise so high as they think they can. At least you shall have your own.”
    Then some fire went suddenly out of Wang the Tiger’s eyes and he sat down and he pressed his lips together straight and hard and he said,
    “You are cautious, I see!”
    His voice was so hard