Wang the Ninth Part 2

He was sitting in the dust of the highway, drawing patterns on the ground, with his dragonfly crown still about his ears, when the sound of strange voices and the stamp of hoofs in the great silence made him glance up. As he understood what it was he gasped aloud in his horror.

For there almost on top of him--not more than twenty feet away--was a huge foreign-devil, with a yellow beard and a great whip in his hand riding on a big horse; and beside him on another horse was a woman-devil, all in white save for her hat, and a veil which fell around her neck.

For once in his life his nimble wits entirely deserted him. He was so stricken that he could neither think nor act. They had caught him out in the country--completely alone; there was not a soul to succour him.

Overcome and already feeling the malign influence striking down his spine, by a supreme effort he managed to wriggle away until he was out of their immediate way. But they had seen him: that was enough! They were making merry at his discomfiture, before they did something worse.

The man was pointing at him, the woman was laughing.

As he cowered in the dust unable to move any further, he saw out of the corners of his eyes the foreign-devil drop his hand, put it into his pocket, pull it out quickly, and swing it fiercely towards him. There was a flash in the golden sunlight--a blinding flash. He closed his eyes and covered his head completely with his arms to meet the shock crushing the wriggling dragon-flies by this action. When he opened them, he was surprised to find himself alone and alive. The man and the woman were trotting their horses very fast and were rapidly becoming smaller in the distance. But there on the ground, almost at his knees, was a bright object. With one leap he was on it and had clutched it in his hand.

It was a piece of silver, quite an immense piece, very bright and new, worth he did not know how many score of the copper-cash.

Miracle of miracles!

For a moment he stood like that turning the coin over and over in his hand, not willing to believe his good-fortune, doubting whether it was really his, biting it to prove its worth. Then, as he saw the figures on horse-back fade away, a fever of excitement possessed him and he dashed madly home. To every one he met he shouted the miracle which had come to him, the silver coin. A foreign-devil had thrown it to him, with one sweep of the hand, like that! He gave an elaborate pantomime so that they should precisely understand the setting and the manner it all had come to pa.s.s. He let every person feel the coin and ring it and bite it.

It was genuine beyond doubt; a dozen told him that; but regarding its precise value opinions differed.

At last he reached the doorway of the parental hut. His father was sitting there, still stripped to the waist, cooling himself after his arduous labours, at the forge. To him also in excited accents he told exactly what had happened--not once but many times, showing how he had crouched in the dust, how the coin had been thrown, how he had picked it up and his immense surprise.

A wondering crowd gathered. He was a hero, the head and front of all local interest. n.o.body had ever heard of a story like that. The coin pa.s.sed from hand to hand, was felt and appraised as it had never been appraised before. It was a dollar, a silver dollar. Then some one offered to exchange it--to give full value in copper cash.

The boy accepted the offer. His father, never saying a word, sat there puffing at his pipe, watching silently all the by-play. The boy was finally handed a double-string of cash; over a thousand coins, a veritable weight of wealth such as he had never felt before.

All evening he sat playing with the double-string, counting the coins to see that he had not been defrauded. He went to sleep with the money clutched across his chest, dreaming impossible dreams in which wealth rained on him in form of silver dollars.

CHAPTER V

Ever after that incident the world seemed different. The ugly, independent child, accustomed to the rigours of the daily struggle for existence--all the acerbities of a life so close to Nature that the people seemed to lie on our great universal mother's very bosom--this child understood in a flash that somehow it was not so with everybody.

There were people who were rich; people who did not have to toil and moil--people who lived in plenty. He himself had been sufficiently strong to survive without trouble; but around him were spiritless children for ever whining and starving--breaking down and dying before the obstacles of life. This little world of elementary beings, living on the tide of life sweeping in and out of the city gate, had been his only lexicon; now he understood that there were other books.

From that day also the vague background of fear in which foreigners had stood suddenly disappeared. It was replaced by an all-consuming curiosity.

He never ceased asking questions regarding them, "the devils," as he still called them from force of habit. Were there many of them in the city--how did they live--why had they wealth--were there no poor ones among them?--these were some of the things he asked.

By dint of questioning, he slowly built up a sort of picture which was still like a dream. He was told that there were a hundred or two of them in the city and that they came from over the seas in vessels driven by steam, fire-wheel vessels they were called in the vernacular. He learnt the expression without knowing what it really signified, until one day he saw a rude native print of a sea-battle being sold by a pedlar who told him that these were ill.u.s.trations of the foreign ships.

His interest was such that he stood in front of the man for ever so long. He memorized the outlines so well that he was soon able to draw in the dust a fire-wheel ship with a stone, which was so amazingly accurate that a number of pa.s.sers-by commended him for his talent. The huge man with the yellow beard had come on one such as these, he thought to himself; these ships travelled hundreds of thousands of _li_, the pedlar had said. They often consumed a year in their voyages, and they could slay enormous numbers of people with their cannon which blazed forth their wrath if any one opposed them. In this twisted manner did the story of high sea navigation reach him.

These details delighted him and filled him with amazement. The power and novelty of it all enchained him and filled his brain. Sometimes, when he had swung himself up into a tree after a bird, he would fall into a day-dream, and sitting astride of a branch, would wonder if it would not be possible for him to get closer to these men and their many inventions. He would like to see their cannon exploding in wrath, and destroying every one so that the waters were filled with struggling beings as in the pedlar's print; it would be a spectacle worthy of being looked upon. Then, presently, he would turn his thoughts to silver and to a stream of coins. The coins would come like hail in his day-dream, and he would pick them up and buy everything that his heart hungered for,--singing-birds and sweetmeats and a cap with a long red ta.s.sel, not to speak of much mutton from the Mohammedan mutton-shops.

Once he started out to try and reach the foreign quarter in the city; but after a few miles the immensity of the great capital frightened him and he ran back home. His father cursed him for playing truant in this way, saying ruefully to the neighbours as he had already said many times: "This boy's courage is too great. His courage is a sad thing."

This censure, however, did not dishearten him. It merely instilled in him greater caution and redoubled his desire to carry out one day his great plan.

He was always watching for foreigners coming out of the city; whenever he detected one in the stream of traffic which was not often, he would follow as fast as his legs could run. But all the neighbourhood had heard of his good fortune, and many urchins imitated him. The foreigners were only irritated by these unaccustomed attentions and instead of giving money shook their whips at the pack at their heels and rode quickly away. Evidently there were limitations to their riches, the boy thought, or else their good-nature was hard to reach. In any case of silver dollars there was never a trace. Perhaps it needed something striking to attract their attention.

He reasoned this out by himself and determined to test it. He had stored away in secret hiding-places various treasures, such as birds and lizards and other delectable things; and now he set to work making attractive receptacles in which to place them. He stole empty tins from men who were careless, and with the aid of his father's tools made numerous holes so that his prey could be put inside and fed and properly exhibited. Soon he had a regular menagerie, properly housed. Then on the weekly holiday, on which the foreigners were apt to come out of the city, he disappeared far down the highway, going miles beyond the beat of every child in the neighbourhood, until he was lost in the country.

Alone with his treasures he sat patiently waiting.

In the middle of the day he saw the first foreigners; they were in hooded carts, men and women together with servants accompanying them.

As soon as the carts approached he dashed up, exhibiting what he had and offering his captives for sale. Something in his eagerness and in his strange wares evidently amused them. They called to one another laughingly and shook their heads. One more generous than the others threw a handful of cash on the ground.

When they had gone he carefully picked up every coin and counted them.

It was not wonderful as a sum of money. Still it was something. The silver dollar, however, remained unapproachable in its especial niche....

CHAPTER VI

A long hard winter, with the world shrouded in snow, served to dim these impressions but not to efface them.

w.a.n.g the Ninth was now no longer a child but a growing boy on whom his father cast jealous looks--as on so much capital that was not bearing due interest. Occasionally by dint of blows and wrathful utterances he made the youth work at the forge, seating him at the first glimmering of dawn before the bellows and watching him so closely that there was never a chance of his stealing away to indulge in his eternal pranks.

When the North wind was blowing, and the highways were bare of traffic, it was not so bad to sit at this task and have the blaze of the white-hot embers warm him. Then the slow, regular pant of the bellows fused with the clang of hammer on the anvil and seemed to him the very incarnation of energy--of a force that drives things along. The boy would sit with his ugly, expressive face gazing straight in front of him. Grasping the wooden handle of the bellows firmly in both hands and stretching his legs wide apart, he would work mechanically, lost in his dreams. All sorts of things would pa.s.s in procession before the little leaping flames, the heat affording him a certain sensual satisfaction which expressed itself in the laziness with which he answered his father's occasional remarks.

He would dream that he was lying on soft cushions with all his heart's desires scattered around him. He would tip over piles of coins and watch them idly roll around too indifferent even to pick them up. Barmecide feasts of a nature satisfying even to his voracious appet.i.te would rise before him--mutton and roast ducks and all manner of browned pork heaped on great platters just as they were at the marriage feasts of rich men.

Sometimes these fancies became so real that the saliva would trickle down his chin; and his father, noticing it, would inquire what was the matter.

"I am hungry," he would answer laconically, refusing to make any confidences and returning to his dreams.

That was when the weather was bad and the bitter North winds blew.

But when the sun shone, even in cold winter it was almost impossible to keep the boy at his task; he escaped by the use of amazing stratagems, disappearing beyond all quest and only returning when it was dark. He would never tell his father where he went; even a beating would not make him confess. Why should he give away his secrets--all the wonderful hiding-places he had discovered, where he went with an impudence and a cunning that were sublime?

He knew, for instance, by going along the ice of the Imperial Ca.n.a.l, how to slip under the bars of the magnificent barge-house where the Imperial barges were docked all winter. He had at first not dared to do more than peer in--pretending, when any one appeared even in the far distance, that he had fallen down whilst indulging in the delectable pastime of sliding on the ice by means of an iron runner fastened to one foot as all the boys in the neighbourhood did. But that was in the early stages of the game. Soon he accustomed himself to pushing open impudently the sliding-bars; and then by creeping right inside along a narrow stone parapet he finally was actually on the barges. There he would sit himself on the broad comfortable seats, and for want of something better to do would roll about on them like a dog. Once he had asked a pedlar friend what would happen if any one were found inside the Imperial barge-house.

"He would be promptly killed," had answered the man. "But then n.o.body would dare such folly."

The reply had set him pondering. Of course, the guards might catch him one day: he did not wish to be killed.

After the pedlar's remark he used always to loiter past the guard-houses to see what the guards were doing. It was their amazing sloth which led him step by step to complete indifference. They were always sleeping or eating or going off into the city leaving the youngest recruit nominally on duty. Once he surprised them all drunk as a result of a weight-lifting contest with great stones, in which the losers had to pay the forfeit in wine. They were lying around the guard-house so stupefied that it would have been easy to enter and rob them of their arms!

One summer he conceived the audacious plan of viewing from a safe hiding-place the whole Imperial Family as it embarked on the barges for the beautiful lakes in the Hills. Every one in the neighbourhood was talking about it: as usual the great ones would leave the city in the sixth month when the great heat had commenced. On such occasions every soul of the common herd was shut indoors to permit the cortege to pa.s.s in perfect seclusion. Blue cloth screens were hung along the roadway, and although many declared that by putting their eyes to cracks in their windows they had caught glimpses of the magnificent sedan-chairs and the hosts of retainers, not one of them had ever looked on the face of the great emperor or the great empress.

By dint of watching closely, w.a.n.g the Ninth was able to judge when the fateful hour was fast approaching; for the barges were being beautifully polished and were taken out for exercise precisely as if they had been living things. It was no longer safe even to go near them; the guards had become suddenly diligent and would not tolerate the slightest deviation from the fixed rules.

By entering into conversation with them and by running errands for some of them, he at length discovered precisely when the great event was expected. The guards told him grumblingly that they would have to stay up all night prior to the arrival of the cortege, to prevent any mishap.

For days he watched very carefully and one evening his vigilance was rewarded. Not only were the guards busy with the boats; but expert watermen had arrived who were engaged in testing everything and who continually disputed regarding the division of money which was later to be distributed. Unless a change of plans was made at the last moment in two days' time the Court would come out of the city. That was what he now heard.

During these two days the boy was in a fever of excitement. He had his plan all complete but he was not sure that he would be able to execute it. On the fateful morn he rose long before dawn and softly unlatching the door stole out as silently as a cat.

There was no moon, and the intense darkness disconcerted him. In the distance, along the highway, he could hear the men of the militia patrol softly singing to themselves to keep away spirits. It seemed to him that there were many more than usual: certainly they were moving about in a way which was not customary with them. Big lanterns showed the headquarters of each post.

Hugging the line of houses he rapidly got beyond the suburb. Then, using shortcuts which he knew as well as any of the wine-smugglers, he finally reached the banks of the Imperial Ca.n.a.l. He was about a half-a-mile from where the barges lay moored against the stone-faced embarkment.