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.