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WANG THE NINTH
_BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR_
POLITICAL:
Manchu and Muscovite
The Re-Shaping of the Far East (2 volumes)
The Truce in the East and its Aftermath
The Coming Struggle in Eastern Asia
The Conflict of Colour
The Fight for the Republic in China
The Truth about China and Japan
ROMANTIC:
Indiscreet Letters from Peking
The Forbidden Boundary
The Human Cobweb
The Unknown God
The Romance of a Few Days
The Revolt
The Eternal Priestess
The Altar Fire
Wang the Ninth. The Story of a Chinese Boy
WANG THE NINTH
THE STORY OF A CHINESE
BOY
BY
PUTNAM WEALE
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1920
COPYRIGHT, 1920,
BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.
VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY
_BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK_
PREFACE
This book is a partial explanation of the phenomenon of China which
seems so strange when curtly dealt with in the daily press.
It has quality of being true and should therefore be known.
Peking, July, 1919
WANG THE NINTH
WANG THE NINTH
CHAPTER I
Wang the Ninth was born a few years before the end of the nineteenth
century in a village called prosaically in the vernacular Ten Li Hamlet
because it lay ten _li_ or Chinese miles from the great imperial
highway. He was the eighth child; that was why, according to immemorial
custom, he was called the Ninth, since the numeral eight added to his
patronymic signified that opprobrious epithet term "tortoise," a
nickname which no Chinese could survive. When he was little more than
three and scarcely weaned (for the children of this land are suckled
until they can run) he was unceremoniously put on a creaking wheelbarrow
and trundled off into the unknown.
This inconsequential _hegira_ was the beginning of his great
adventures,--and was the natural aftermath of a curiously swift tragedy
in an environment saturated with inaction.
Famine had suddenly descended on Ten Li Hamlet, and his brothers and
sisters, having been leased or sold one after another to neighbours (you
can use whichever expression you like), he and his father had become the
last survivors in a disrupted family. For his mother, too, had tired of
privation. She had sat ominously quiet for one whole week and had then
slipped away with a travelling blacksmith, who had been working for a
season not fifty feet from the family home of mud-bricks and who
disappeared as he had come--like a wraith in the night.
It was this which had been the last straw for the father--not the
hunger. For, he, too, was a blacksmith by trade. Added to the shame in
his bosom for the beggarly condition to which he had been reduced, there
had come a volcanic outburst of hurt professional pride. He was totally
unable to reconcile himself to the idea that he had been abandoned in
favour of another such as he--and for no better reason that there was
want in the land. For there was always want; never could he remember a
time when the people were not a-hungering, marching through the country
in ragged bands, and spreading dismay wherever they camped.
So one dawn he had sullenly dragged out two baskets, put his last child
into one, thrown on top of him some spare clothing, placed his few pots
and pans and the implements of his trade (including the unwieldy
bellows) in the other, and had marched down the rutted village road
shouting curses on every one and declaring that he was shaking the dust
of the poverty-stricken place for ever off his feet.
Thus had he gone angrily and vigorously, full of resolution, until he
had covered the ten _li_ which separated the village from the great
highway. Then, when he had seen the broad road leading to the capital,
and the carts and the travellers in their handsome clothing, and the
long camel-trains with their rich loads of merchandise, a sense of
unfamiliarity and loneliness had suddenly overwhelmed him, and he had
sat down and wept loudly and unrestrainedly in the manner all Chinese
will do.
Nobody had minded his weeping--not even the child in the basket who
continued to sleep calmly and impassively, its pinched face turned in
the direction of Heaven. Why indeed should any one mind? As far as the
eye could reach there was nothing but brown country--the great Northern
plains stretched into infinity and looked upon this evanescent emotion
much as the Sphinx surveys the shifting desert sands. A little while you
may weep, a little while you may laugh, they seemed to say; then the
great silence which covers us all....
So presently the man had stopped and become angry once more. He rose to
his feet, tightened his cord belt, and smearing the tears from his
seamed face, surveyed the world indifferently. Somehow he would discover
a brighter future.
In the basket the child lay in peace. The rising sun pushed golden
fingers through the bamboo-work as if to caress its innocence. The
father watched with eyes which saw and yet did not see; for he was too
simple to know more than that a child is a great blessing, a jewel,
because it is of one's flesh and a kind of indefinite prolongation of
one's endeavours to conquer the devil. Disaster had been for him like a
huge river in spate which had rushed down on him and left him marooned
on a tiny rocking island in the very centre. Now he saw a causeway
mysteriously growing out of these dread waters: and in his vague fancies
he associated this with the presence of his child.
Presently as he sat gazing there was a thin cry. The little legs kicked
with vigour, and the arms with their clenched fists sought to throw off
the clothing.
"_Ba-ba_," wailed the eighth child who was called the Ninth, now
thoroughly awake. "I am hungry. Give me to eat."
"Wait," said the father roughly yet kindly, brought back from his
dreams. "Soon you shall eat."
He conjured up from the bottom of the other basket a big bowl half full
of a sort of porridge made from little millet, which was cold and
distasteful but which was all that he had. It was the work of a few
minutes to light the tiny portable whiteclay stove which he had included
in his salvage and which even the poorest in the land always possess.
Soon his cooking was done and the child was eating and had become
content.
"_Ba-ba_," it lisped again, struggling to get up. "Where do we go?"
"To the city," grumbled the father, beginning to pack up again. "To the
city. Stay quiet. We have far to go."
Already he was off, trundling the wheelbarrow and still eating as he
walked. The sun rose higher and higher and perspiration beaded his
forehead, but now there was no question of turning back. He was
following the mysterious causeway which led to his destiny. On and on he
tramped, pushing the creaking wheelbarrow through the chasm of space and
sometimes exchanging remarks with the passing muleteers and
camel-drivers. Traffic was growing heavier as the city was approached
and a veil of dust hung in the air. The highway was strung across the
plain like a great frayed rope, which sometimes tightened to a rigid
straight line, and sometimes was all knots and twists invented to dismay
those who were weary and ill at ease.
In the middle of the day the man lay down and slept under a tree; but
ere two hours had passed he was up again and pressing on.
The sun flared out; the stars twinkled brightly in the skies; and still
he did not stop. Hardy as only a peasantry can be who know no comforts,
he pressed on tirelessly--determined to reach his objective. The
creaking wheel was a veritable lullaby to the child who slept as
peacefully as if in its mother's arms, hardly stirring in spite of the
bumping, always stretched motionless on its little back.
On and on in the darkness, one hour, two hours, three hours, four. Then
at last in the middle of the night, when full forty miles had been
covered, a low blaze of lights and the shadow of a great city-wall.
The man stopped abruptly and the jerk woke up the child.
"_Ba-ba_," came the inevitable cry.
He bent over it.
"The city," he exclaimed in his rude, guttural voice, "would you see the
city?"
He picked up his son and holding him tightly in his arms, pointed with
one finger.
"There, you see ... the lights and the city-wall. Beyond there is a
great gate through which one passes but which is now closed."
The child no longer fretted: it was staring silently, drinking in
everything as if its very life depended upon strict attention. The
father felt its little body taut under the ragged blue clothes. Some new
impulse possessed it. It leaned towards the city, as if a mysterious
force were pulling.
"Well, what do you say?" inquired the father at last, feeling the need
for a little talk.
"It is good," said the child very gravely, as only a very old nation can
speak. "It is good," it repeated, nodding its head after the manner of
its elders--"We shall find food."
Then it sank back content on the straw in the basket, and the father
seizing the handles of the wheelbarrow pushed clumsily on.