• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

FROM HIS hut where Wang Lung lay hid he heard hour after hour the passing of feet, the feet of soldiers marching to battle. Lifting sometimes a very little the mat which stood between them and him, he put one eye to the crack and he saw these feet passing, passing, leather shoes and cloth-covered legs, marching one after the other, pair by pair, score upon score, thousands upon thousands. In the night when he was at his load he saw their faces flickering past him, caught for an instant out of the darkness by the flaming torch ahead. He dared ask nothing concerning them, but he dragged his load doggedly, and he ate hastily his bowl of rice, and slept the day fitfully through in the hut behind the straw. None spoke in those days to any other. The city was shaken with fear and each man did quickly what he had to do and went into his house and shut the door.

There was no more idle talk at twilight about the huts. In the market places the stalls where food had been were now empty. The silk shops drew in their bright banners and closed the fronts of their great shops with thick boards fitting one into the other solidly, so that passing through the city at noon it was as though the people slept.

It was whispered everywhere that the enemy approached and all those who owned anything were afraid. But Wang rung was not afraid, nor the dwellers in the huts, neither were they afraid. They did not know for one thing who this enemy was, nor had they anything to lose since even their lives were no great loss. If this enemy approached let him approach, seeing that nothing could be worse than it now was with them. But every man went on his own way and none spoke openly to any other.

Then the managers of the houses of merchandise told the laborers who pulled the boxes to and fro from the river's edge that they need come no more, since there were none to buy and sell in these days at the counters, and so Wang Lung stayed in his hut day and night and was idle. At first he was glad, for it seemed his body could never get enough rest and he slept as heavily as a man dead. But if he did not work neither did he earn, and in a few short days what they had of extra pence was gone and again he cast about desperately as to what he could do. And as if it were not enough of evil to befall them, the public kitchens closed their doors also and those who had in this way provided for the poor went into their own houses and shut the doors and there was no food and no work, and no one passing upon the streets of whom anyone could beg.

Then Wang Lung took his girl child into his arms and he sat with her in the hut and he looked at her and said softly,

"Little fool, would you like to go to a great house where there is food and drink and where you may have a whole coat to your body?"

Then she smiled, not understanding anything of what he said, and put up her small hand to touch with wonder his staring eyes and he could not bear it and he cried out to the woman,

"Tell me, and were you beaten in that great house?"

And she answered him flatly and somberly,

"Every day was I beaten."

And he cried again,

"But was it just with a girdle of cloth or was it with bamboo or rope?"

And she answered in the same dead way,

"I was beaten with a leather thong which had been halter for one of the mules, and it hung upon the kitchen wall."

Well he knew that she understood what he was thinking, but he put forth his last hope and he said,

"This child of ours is a pretty little maid, even now. Tell me were the pretty slaves beaten also?"

And she answered indifferently, as though it were nothing to her this way or that,

"Aye, beaten or carried to a man's bed, as the whim was, and not to one man's only but to any that might desire her that night, and the young lords bickered and bartered with each other for this slave or that and said, 'Then if you tonight, I tomorrow,' and when they were all alike wearied of a slave the men servants bickered and bartered for what the young lords left, and this before a