A House Divided Read Online Free PDF

to Wang the Merchant. But how can son of men as great as these wander like this alone? He lives in that old earthen house of Wang Lung, and it must be he is out of his mind.”
    This rumor reached even to the ears of Wang the Merchant in the town and he heard it from an old chief clerk in his counting house, and he said sharply, “Of course it is no brother’s son of mine, for I have seen and heard nothing of him. And is it likely true that my brother would let free his precious only son in such a way? I will send out a serving man tomorrow and see who it is who lives in my father’s tenant house. I gave no one such a leave to live there for my brother.” And secretly he feared the sojourner might be some pretending, robber spy.
    But the tomorrow never came, for those at the Tiger’s camp had heard the rumor, too. That day Wang Yuan rose as his habit was now and even as he stood in the doorway eating bread and sipping tea, and looking out across the land and dreaming, he saw in the distance a chair borne upon men’s shoulders and then another and about them walked a guard of soldiers, and he knew the soldiers for his father’s by their garb. He went inside the door then, suddenly not able to eat or drink any more, and he put the food down on the table and stood waiting, and to himself he thought most bitterly, “It is my father, I suppose—and what shall we say to each other?” And he would have liked to run away across the fields like any child, except he knew this meeting must come upon some day or other, and he could not run away forever. So he waited very troubled, and forcing back his old childish fear, and he could eat no more while he waited.
    But when the chairs drew near and were set down, there came out from them not his father nor any man at all, but two women; one was his mother, and the other was her serving woman.
    Now could Yuan be astonished indeed, for he seldom saw his mother, and he never knew her to have left her house before, and so he went out slowly to make his greeting, wondering what this meant. She came towards him, leaning on her servant’s arm, a white-haired woman in a decent garb of black, her teeth all gone so that her cheeks were sunken. But still there was good ruddiness upon her cheeks, and if the look upon her face was simple and a little silly, even, yet it was kind, too. When she saw her son she cried out in a plain, country way, for she had been a village maiden in her youth, “Son, your father sent me to say that he is ill and near to death. He says you are to have what you will if only you will come at once before he dies. He says to say to you he is not angry, and therefore only come.”
    This she said loudly and for all to hear, and in truth even by now the villagers were clustering to see and hear a new thing. But Yuan saw none of them, he was so confused by what he heard. He had strengthened himself through all these days not to leave this house against his will, but how could he refuse his father if he were truly dying? Yet was it true? Then he remembered how his father’s hands had shaken when he stretched them out in eagerness to take the comfort of the wine, and he feared it might be true, and a son ought not to refuse a father anything.
    Now the serving woman, seeing his doubt, felt it her duty to aid her mistress, and she cried loudly, too, looking here and there upon the villagers to mark her own importance, “Ah, my little general, it is true! We are all half-crazed and all the doctors, too! The old general lies at the end of his life, and if you would see him living, you must go quickly to him. I swear he has not long to live—if he has, then may I die myself!” And all the villagers listened greedily to this and looked at each other meaningfully to hear the Tiger was so near his end.
    But still Yuan doubted these two women, the more because he felt in them some hidden secret eagerness to force him home, and when the serving woman saw his continuing doubt,