Dragon Seed: The Story of China at War

IX

NOW WU LIEN SAW that if he were to have safety from his own enemies he must have his protection from the enemy who had the city in their power, and so after a day or two of terror and not daring to come out of his door, he made up his mind one night that he would seek out the officer who had been courteous to him and tell him all his troubles, and how he was no traitor at heart, but merely a man of business who had in his house more than his own mouth to feed.

So he waited until night came full and then, putting on his oldest clothes and taking no lantern, he went to the street and the number which the officer had affixed to the paper he had left with him, and there he knocked upon a closed door, wondering while he did so, because he knew this door. After some time the door was opened and by a soldier and Wu Lien’s knees knocked together, because the soldier’s face was so surly. But he calmed himself by remembering how often these men of the enemy looked surly, and he held out his paper and after looking at it awhile, the soldier pulled him in and motioned to him to wait while he went into the house.

This house Wu Lien knew when he saw it, for it had belonged to a famous rich man of the city, now run away from the war, and once two springs ago the ladies there had sent for Wu Lien to bring some of his foreign toys and small goods, to see if any pleased them. It had been that day a gay and noisy place, full of women and children and in the garden where he now stood there had been a traveling show of puppets, and everyone, even the servants and bondmaids, had been out in the sunshine to see and to laugh, and they had bade him wait until the game was over, and so he had stood and laughed, too, for the puppets were better than usual and the man who spoke for them more than commonly witty.

But now the garden was gray with winter and dark with night, and the house was silent. When the soldier came back he motioned that Wu Lien was to follow him and so Wu Lien went behind him into the house and there in the main room were three or four enemy officers drinking together, and they looked at him so sourly that for a moment he wished he had not come. Even the courteous officer looked at him coldly, and he thought fearfully that if these were such men as grew more cold the more they drank, he had come at an ill time. Nevertheless he was here, and in his own way he had a dogged courage when he was working for his own ends, and so he spoke to the one he knew.

“Sir, I am come upon business, and if I may speak plainly then I shall use less of your time.”

“Speak, then,” the officer said, but did not ask him to sit down.

When Wu Lien saw he was to be treated as a servant he did not like it, but he was a sensible man and he knew this was no time for pride so he swallowed it as fast as it came up, and went on. “I am a citizen of this city and I have the shop that you saw and I have long dealt in foreign goods, which for the most part have come from your honorable East-Ocean country. I desire nothing but peace so that I may go on with this business. Whoever is to rule let him rule, and I will say nothing so long as my business can be done. But there are those in this city who call me traitor because this is my heart, and they have it in their purpose to kill me, and so I am come to you who rule us now to ask if there is any way that I can be made safe.”

This the officers heard and the one who understood told the others what Wu Lien said, and they talked awhile together, Wu Lien understanding nothing of their foreign language, and at last the one he knew gave a short nod.

“You may be useful to us if you will,” he said.

“Will I not be?” Wu Lien replied.

“We shall set up a people’s government here,” the officer said, “and it will be a government of those who will rule for us. What is your ability?”

“Alas, I am a man of small abilities,” Wu Lien began, but the officer cut him short.

“Can you read? Can you write?”

“I? Certainly,” he replied proudly. “And I am skilled at the abacus, and I know how to conduct a merchant’s whole business. I am also a student of the Confucian classics, as my father was before me.”

“That will be no use to us,” the officer said. “Do you know English?”

“Alas that I do not,” Wu Lien said, “I never thought it would be necessary to learn another language than my own, seeing that we are so numerous a people that though a man spoke to a stranger every hour of his life, he would die before he had spoken to every man in our nation.”

“But are you swift with your brush in your own language?”

“Without boasting, I can say that I am,” Wu Lien said with modesty.

The officers talked together again, and after a little while once more the one he knew said to him:

“You will move into this house at once. Your wage will be fixed according to your abilities. You will have a title, also to be shaped according to what you are able. Come here tomorrow.”

Now as he heard this Wu Lien’s head began to whirl around inside as though birds circled his brain.

“But I have a wife — my old mother — and two children,” he said.

“They may all come here,” the officer said. “Here they will be safe and you also. Rooms will be given them.”

Such good fortune as this, to live safely in a city where none were safe, to have a wage when none knew where his food was to come from, to have his household with him, to know, above all, that he himself would not be stabbed or shot if he turned his back, all this fortune poured upon Wu Lien and he felt the joy that a man feels on a hot and thirsty summer’s day when he finds a cool unknown spring on a steep mountain side.

“May I not bring my few things here at once?” he asked. “Most of my goods are ruined and what I can bring will take little room.”

They talked together again, and then the officer nodded his short nod.

“You may come at once,” he said.

“And tomorrow shall I bring my children and their mother?”

The officer gave a small smile. “Yes, you may,” he said. Then he put up his hand to bid Wu Lien listen to what he said.

“You see how merciful we are to those who do not resist us!” he said in a loud voice such as priests use in temples when they speak to the worshipers who come on a feast day. “We seek nothing but peace and the good of all, and those who help us shall have their full reward.”

“Yes, great one,” Wu Lien muttered. He bowed three times, without thinking, as though the officer were a magistrate, and overcome with his fortune, he went quickly out of the room, stopping only at the gate to give a coin to the soldier there.

That night he spent in putting together his goods, and it was dawn almost when he went out and found a ricksha and piled his stuff into it and then sat himself on top of all. And so he entered into the gates of the enemy.

Great was his joy the next day when he put on his best garments and with a guard of two enemy soldiers he went toward that place where his wife was in the white woman’s compound.

He only wished that he could hire a foreign motor vehicle instead of the old horse carriage he had found a few streets away. But even so he looked very well as the driver stopped his aged horse at the gate.

“Get down,” he called to the driver from the seat where he sat. “Beat on the gate and tell them that Wu Lien has come for his household.” And he sat himself back as an official does who has spoken to his servant.

But the driver shouted back at him, “I dare not leave this horse of mine. He has a failing that if he does not feel my pull on the bridle he sits down quickly on his tail like a dog to rest himself, and then I cannot get him up again with fewer than four men to help me lift him.”

Wu Lien was still afraid of his guards and he dared not ask them to lift a horse nor could he do it himself, and so he could do nothing but get down and beat on the gate and when the little window in it opened and the gateman’s old face peered out he had to say, as though he were his own servant:

“I am Wu Lien, and I am come for my household.”

The gateman stared very hard at the two enemy soldiers, and he opened the gate enough to let Wu Lien through and shut it against the soldiers, who shouted and beat on the gate with their guns to come in. Then the gateman turned to Wu Lien.

“How is it you have these two with you?” he asked him gravely.

“I am a merchant,” Wu Lien said, “and these two have been told off to protect me.”

“To protect you!” the gateman repeated and laughed.

“I will guarantee them,” Wu Lien said, with dignity.

“Still I cannot bring them in on my own body, seeing that they are the enemy,” the gateman retorted. “I must first ask the white woman.”

So Wu Lien had to stand there waiting until the man brought the white woman and then he had to explain as best he could to that woman why these two guards should be let in and the guards had not stopped their beating on the gate and roaring and Wu Lien was in a sweat and he heartily wished that he were not guarded at all.

But the white woman seemed not to hear any noise as she came near. She looked as cool and quiet as an image in a foreign temple, and she said to Wu Lien in her foreign voice that always made the words she spoke seem foreign:

“Are you not a traitor?”

By this time he was in such a sweat that he was peevish and so he said very peevishly:

“Lady, how do I know what you call traitor? In my own eyes I am only a man who wants to do his business as best he can, and I have my family to feed and I am the only one to do it.”

But she said in the same cool voice, “Have you not seen what has taken place in this city?”

And he answered still peevishly, “What has happened has happened and it is only to be expected that foreign victors are worse than our own, and I say the sooner we forget such things, the sooner peace will come for us all.”

Then this woman said, “I see you are a traitor and the sooner you have your household out of these walls, the better it is,” and she turned to the gateman and told him to let the guards in. So the man opened the gate very unwillingly, and the guards burst in angry at the delay, but they were taken back somewhat when they saw this tall cold woman with her face white and her yellow hair.

“Be quiet,” she told them, as sternly as though they were children. “Conduct yourselves decently and stay where you are.”

And Wu Lien trembled to hear her, and thanked Heaven that the guards spoke no language except their own and so did not understand her. But her coldness they understood and her tones, and they stood sheepish and angry before her and she turned to Wu Lien:

“I cannot let you come further than the gatehouse with such companions as these, and so I will bring your own to you here.”

She left him and he watched her walking over the grass, her long black foreign skirts brushing behind her. And there he stood with these two surly guards and the truth was he was afraid to be left with them lest they think the delay was his fault and turn on him somehow, and he felt like a man who has against his own will been given two wolves for pets, and he cannot refuse them and yet he fears he will be eaten. And the gateman stood there grinning and picking his teeth and watching the three of them.

But in a few moments Wu Lien saw his wife coming and with them her children and then Ling Sao. Now Orchid would gladly have come too, but the white woman had forbidden it because she was still young and pretty and she did not want the soldiers to see her.

“I wish you well, mother,” Wu Lien called to Ling Sao.

“And you also,” she replied. She was surprised to see the soldiers and all that was on the edge of her tongue to say to Wu Lien she held back in her amazement.

“Have you heard anything of my old man?” she only asked him.

“No, I have not,” Wu Lien replied. “I have heard nothing since the day my children’s mother came here, and I do not even know how you are here.”

“I came that night,” Ling Sao said, and as she spoke she reasoned that this man did not know of his mother’s death and she made up her mind that she would not tell him the worst truth of it, but only so much as he must know.

“Since you have not seen my children’s father, I must tell you, and prepare yourself, son-in-law, for bad news. Your old mother is no more. She was crushed under a beam when the enemy came into our house and my old man buried her in the field in a coffin he made himself, and there is a mound over her, or so I am told by others who have come here since I have.”

Wu Lien’s wife at once put her sleeve to her eyes, for though by now she knew all, yet it was only decent to make a show of fresh weeping before her husband, and Wu Lien quickly wiped his eyes, too.

But the guards were growing weary by now and they prodded Wu Lien in the buttocks with the ends of their guns to signify to him that they were ready to return and so weeping had to be postponed and Wu Lien could not even thank Ling Sao as he ought for caring for his mother. And Ling Sao, though she would not be afraid, yet she bawled after him through the gate, “Is it safe for my daughter to go with you?”

Wu Lien, already settling his household in the carriage, and the two guards would have the two good seats, could only bawl back, “Yes, I am protected and so are all who belong to me!”

Then in haste he made off and Ling Sao was left there with the white woman of whom she was in hearty awe at all times and especially now because that woman looked at her with her yellow eyes and said:

“I am sorry for you, poor woman,” and so saying she went away and then Ling Sao was left only with the gateman, and she asked him:

“Why does she pity me when there are others who have suffered much more?”

“Because,” the gateman said, “your daughter’s husband has gone over to be a running dog of the enemy.”

“Is that why he had on his best wine red robe and his black velvet vest!” she cried.

And the gateman said, “That is why,” and he grinned and began to pick his teeth again.

Upon this thought Ling Sao walked back into the hall where Orchid was and her daughter and her grandchildren, for it was too cold a day to loiter out of doors. Rain had fallen and now it was changing to snow and she was glad of the warmth of the hall when she stepped into it. Yet she was very restless somehow because her elder daughter was gone and free, and she sat down and told everything to her little daughter and to Orchid, and the more they talked together the more these women longed to be free, too.

“I could eat my food down better if I saw that old man of mine,” Ling Sao thought to herself, and she thought about her husband and her sons and she was sure they did not do well without her, for like all good women she had taught them to be helpless in the house without her, and she was very gloomy for awhile and in her mind she saw what was left of her house filthy, the work undone and the men eating their food cold and raw and anyhow, and she did not even know whether one of them had ever taken thought to see how she cooked the rice or how she braised the cabbage, not to consider fish or meat.

“Meat perhaps is not yet to be bought,” she mused in herself, “but fish they can catch any day in the pond if they break the ice, if there is ice, but do they know enough even to take the entrails out, or if they do, then what to do next!”

And in truth there was restlessness all through that hall when the women heard that one of them had gone home and woman looked at woman and thought, “The times must be better,” and they thought, each one, “It will be my turn next if my man has the wits for it.” And so all were eager to be gone, and mothers lost their calm and slapped their children for small faults they overlooked on other days so that by evening half the children in the hall were crying, and Ling Sao cursed and wished she dared to go home alone by night, but she did not.

Nor were things bettered by a letter that came in a few days from Ling Sao’s elder daughter boasting of the fine rooms she had that had been part of a rich man’s house, and how her husband was given the greatest honor and how they lived better than they ever had and that all was peace for them, and then she said:

“As for me, I do think this enemy is better than we thought and certainly he has dealt well with my daughter and her husband and the city is now very safe and peaceful so far as we can see.”

Well enough Ling Sao knew that her daughter could no more write such a letter than she could read it, and she had had to find a teacher in this school to read it to her, an unmarried female and the only true old virgin she had ever seen, for who knows what nuns in temples are? Now she supposed that Wu Lien had written the letter and she did not dream of doubting what it said, for she was one of those persons who need only to hear that a thing is written down on paper to believe it true.

But the old virgin one said, “I would not put too much faith in it. We still hear of many killed in the streets and of women violated.”

This she said, her nose up, and Ling Sao smiled. What would such a one know of women violated, she thought, but did not speak, except to ask in curiosity:

“Are you a nun, then, lady?”

“Certainly I am not,” that one replied as though she were angry. “I could have married many times, for matchmakers have sought me more times than I can remember, but I have preferred learning and books to all else.”

“I have a son’s wife like you,” Ling Sao said, “but she is to have a child.”

“Ah,” the woman said, as though it was nothing to her and so it was not and Ling Sao went away, having thanked her for the reading.

Then to Orchid and her little daughter she told the good news in the letter and Orchid talked among the women and so the restlessness grew. Now none was more weary of the walls of this place than Orchid was, for it was a place too peaceful for her, this gray building and the smooth spread of grass, still brown with winter, and no noise anywhere except twice a day the sound of hymn-singing in a small temple where they could go if they wished to hear the foreign religion. Orchid went once to see what they did but she could not understand what was said and the singing seemed in her ears like wailing and so she went no more. Then, too, the food they ate every day was the same and tasteless after a while, and she longed for something sweet in her mouth. In the village she was always running out at the sound of the little bell that the vendors of sweets strike to tell of their coming, and she bought barley sticks rolled in sesame seeds or she bought squares of sesame in dark sugar, and best of all she loved that kind of sweet called “cowhide” because it can be chewed so long, and she used to chew it half the day. Her children, too, were restless because they had no toys, and they cried for the small fragile toys they once had that vendors carry to village streets, little clay dogs and dolls, or windmills, or sugar men and women, or else they remembered that they once had kites and lanterns made like rabbits and fish and butterflies, and here they had nothing.

So when Orchid heard how well her sister-in-law did, she thought to herself:

“The city is at peace again and there is no reason why I cannot steal out of the gate some morning and see what there is in the shops. I might even go to visit my sister-in-law, and then if all seems well, I will send word by some one to my children’s father, and we can come home again.”

But she said nothing to anyone, for she was one of those soft stubborn women who pretending always to yield to others yet do what they like because they never tell anyone what they do. So one morning a few days later when her smallest child was asleep and the other playing, she made a yawn before Ling Sao’s face and she lied to her, thus:

“I slept ill last night, and so I am going to my pallet for awhile if it will not trouble you to see to my two and the baby is asleep.”

“Sleep if you like if there is nothing to do,” Ling Sao replied a little sourly. Somewhere she herself had found a little cotton and a spinning spool and she was spinning white thread. But she was the sort of woman who finds work everywhere and if there is none she makes it, and she worked now with some show because she knew Orchid was not like her.

Orchid smiled and went her way into the building and she came out the other door and behind a wall she went to the gate and she knew beforehand that this was a time when the gateman barred the gate and went inside his little house to eat his meal. There was no one now to be seen and she drew the bar softly that he might not hear and she stepped into the street and pulled the gate after her, and if he looked out of his window it would seem that the gate was still closed. It seemed so good to be out that she felt herself a bird set free, and she had a little money in her bosom to spend, too, that she chanced to have there when she ran out of the house that day Ling Tan had told them to go. So she went happily down the street that morning, and there were few people about, for the hour was not yet noon, and it was a fair bright day, clear and cold and the air was strong as she breathed it in and out, and everything about her seemed at peace.

“How surprised my man’s mother will be,” she thought, “when I come back and tell her how peaceful the city is and how there is no reason why we should not go to our home! Nevertheless, I will not go further than the first shop, and then I will turn back.”

So she went on a little further, never knowing that she was being watched by the enemy and had been since she left the gate. Now orders had come down from above that no open evil was to be done in the streets any more but what went on behind walls none knew, and as she passed a public watercloset for men, such as was to be found near any main street, she was suddenly fallen upon by five enemy soldiers who had been watching for a lonely woman to come by that they might draw her in. Such women were very rare now, for what woman would go out alone in these days? When they saw Orchid they thought she must be a courtesan, because she looked so gay, and indeed she had a soft round face, and her body was plump and soft, and her full mouth was red, and they held her fast, and gloated on her for a moment and quarreled for who should have her first.

Orchid was one of those women who live long when they are loved and cared for, but in trouble they die soon. Now as she looked into the black faces of these lust-filled men she was weak already. When one after another those men took their will on her, and no passer-by dared to come into that public place to save her when once they had stared in and seen five soldiers with their guns against the wall, then she was like a rabbit fallen upon by wolfish dogs, and she was helpless. She screamed and then they beat her, and one held his hand over her nose and mouth, and she struggled only a little and then her life went out as easily as a little rabbit’s does, and the last man had to use her dead. When they were through with her they left her there and went away.

Then only did the few pitying passers-by dare to come in and they came in and covered that poor body, and wondered where she came from and they stared at her and wondered again who she was.

“She is a countrywoman,” they said. “She has a village look, and see, her hair is bound on a silver pin such as our mothers used to use, and she wears a short coat and an old fashioned black silk skirt. She is from a village and she did not know how our times are in this city.”

All these passers were men, for there was not a woman to be seen on the streets these days, and they did not know what to do with this body. None dared to take it home, because he might be accused of the death, and at last one head wiser than the others said:

“Let us take it to the white woman, for none will accuse her, and she can bury the body if no one comes for it.”

So they called a ricksha and though the man was unwilling to pull such a load, still when he heard the white woman’s name he hoped for an extra fee and he dragged the load the short way to the gate that Orchid a while before had opened with such pleasure. It was locked now and the gateman had finished his meal and was sitting on his little bench inside picking his teeth as he always did when he was idle, and he heard a scratching on the gate. He rose and opened it and when he saw Orchid he cried aloud:

“Why, this woman was one who sheltered here!”

“Why did you let her out?” the men groaned.

“I did not,” the gateman swore, “I let no woman out.” Then it began to come into his mind what had happened, and why the gate had been open when he had come out of his door. He had wondered if he had been forgetful and left it open, and he had barred it quickly, thinking he must be getting too old and he had been glad there was no one to see what he had forgotten.

“She must have stolen through when I was eating,” he said now and he ran for the white woman, though first he shut the gate fast.

That white woman he found at her prayers, and she came fresh from her prayers and when she saw what had happened her pale face grew yet more stern.

“You did well to bring her here,” she told them all, “for here she has been for many days and her husband’s mother and sister and her two children are here now and I will send for her husband.”

So they all went away content since she took on herself the danger, and the ricksha puller was most content of all because of his fee.

When they were gone, that white woman told the gateman to call others to help him and to carry this poor creature now on the ground into the temple hall, and to lay her there on a long low table. She waited there while he went and until others came and lifted Orchid and carried her away. Then slowly and thoughtfully she went to find Ling Sao and with few words and yet gently enough she told her what had happened.

At first Ling Sao thought the white woman must have mixed Orchid in her mind with the many other women taking refuge in this house. “You are wrong, white woman,” she said. “My son’s wife lies asleep in her bed and I was thinking of going to call her, for her child is awake, and she has slept half the day.”

With no change upon her always sad face the white woman said, “Come with me,” and she took Ling Sao by the sleeve and led her into the hall of the temple, and there on the low table Ling Sao saw it was indeed Orchid, and she burst into wailing, though how this had come about she could not imagine.

“But I saw her not over two hours ago, fat and alive!” she wailed.

And then the white woman told her what they had surmised and again in her bare scanty words and Ling Sao could only listen.

“So it must have been,” she wept, “and such a silly thing this pitiful fool could have done. She has always been secret and stubborn behind her smiles and softness, and by this she has met her death. Oh, send for my husband and my son somehow, for what to do now I cannot say alone!”

“I had thought you would want them,” the white woman said, “and so I will send a messenger out by the water gate tonight when it is dark. Since this one is dead it is useless to risk a life for her by day.”

And still without a tear or a change on her face she told a temple servant to bring a cloth and cover Orchid and to keep watch of her through the day that was left until it was decided what was to be done. To Ling Sao’s hearty weeping she gave no more heed than if it were a child crying, and at last Ling Sao sobbed:

“It is so piteous, and the two little children left with only me, and how shall I find a wife for my son again in such times as these? And yet, white woman, your eyes are dry!”

“I have seen too much sorrow,” that white woman said in her pale clear voice. “I think nothing will ever make me weep again — or laugh.” She lifted her yellow eyes and seemed to look off into something she saw that Ling Sao could not see. “I think my heart will not stir again until I come into my dear Lord’s presence,” she said.

Now it was Ling Sao who stopped weeping and because she was so astonished.

“But they told me you were never wed!” she cried.

“No, I am not, in the earthly way you mean,” that white woman said, “but I have given myself to God, to the one true God, and one day He will take me to Him.”

This she said and Ling Sao was so aghast at what she heard that her tears were dried for the time and she could only mutter, “O-mi-to-fu,” to protect herself from foreign magic.

“And you,” the white woman said, bringing her pale eyes down upon Ling Sao and piercing her through with their light, “God wants you, too, dear soul. It may be that He has brought this sorrow upon you to soften your heart to bring you to Him.” At this Ling Sao grew most heartily afraid and she began to back away from that white woman.

“You must tell him I cannot come,” she said quickly. “I have my own husband and now these two children to look after and I am a woman full of cares and I never left my own house before this.”

“In your own house too you can serve God,” the white woman said, and as she spoke she came toward her, and now Ling Sao was terrified and it seemed to her this white woman grew taller and taller by some magic and she towered white and tall and Ling Sao gave a great scream and ran out of the temple and across the grass and into the hall where the women and the children were, and there gasping and crying she told them all about Orchid and how the white woman’s god had caused her to be killed.

In as little time as she took to tell it she had every woman frightened too, lest this foreign god would so kill them all, and there was such a panic that the serving women heard the noise and ran in and then that teacher who had never married, and it took all they could say to bring calm again and to tell the women what the white woman meant and even so they did not quite believe, and if it had not been that Orchid had fallen into such trouble when she went out of the gate, those women would have now run out together and they only begged that the white woman would not come near them at least until they could go home safely.

By the time all this had taken place it was near to nightfall, and she put the children to sleep and they slept, being still too young to know what it meant to have their mother dead. Beside them Ling Sao sat, weak from all the day had brought, nor had she eaten, and she waited to see if Ling Tan and their son would come. Half way between sunset and midnight she heard footsteps and she looked up and saw the door open and there stood the gateman motioning to her and she rose at once and picked her way among the sleepers. Outside in the cold darkness stood the two men she watched for, and never in all her life had she felt such comfort in her heart. She began to weep again and she turned from one to the other, sobbing and crying.

“Oh, my man — oh, what has befallen us? Oh my son — what shall I do for you?”

The white woman had herself met the two men and told them what happened and at this moment she came again and at the sight of her Ling Sao’s tears dried, but she was not afraid now that her husband was here and she could draw near to him.

“Come with me,” the white woman said, and so they followed her into the room she prayed in, and where she read her sacred books, and they sat down as she asked them to do, and she told them that if they wished she would find a coffin for Orchid and for the time being bury her here.

“Then when better times come you may take her away and put her into your own ground,” she said, “if that would make you happier.”

They looked at each other, and Ling Tan spoke for the others. “There is no way now whereby we could get a coffin and a body out of the city and so we must do as you say and give you our thanks. Your mercy is beyond our understanding and it is not often found even around the four seas.”

“There is no merit in me,” the white woman said. “I do it in the name of the true God, whom I serve.”

To this none made reply because none knew what she meant except that Ling Sao grew afraid again and now she made up her mind that she would go back this very night with Ling Tan. When he rose to go, she rose also.

“I go home with you,” she said to him.

“Indeed, you shall not,” he said. “The times are not calm yet, and I do not know what our life is to be with these victors we have to rule us.”

“I go with you,” she said stubbornly.

Now he knew his woman, and he knew the look on her round dark face and that nothing he could do would keep her here if she said she was going.

“Curse you for the stubborn daughter of a stubborn mother,” he said, “and shall I be to blame if you fall into evil?”

“Whatever happens to me I will blame no one except myself,” she said.

But he was still not ready to yield. “What of our little daughter?” he said. “Will you leave her here alone?”

For the moment Ling Sao was confounded, but the white woman spoke before she could.

“If you go,” she said, “leave your daughter with me. We had in good times a girls’ school here, but now the school is moved and all the pupils are a thousand miles up the river in free land. It happens that tomorrow others go on a foreign ship and guarded by two of my countrymen and their wives, and she will be safe and when you want her back you shall have her.”

Those other three looked at each other and weighed what to do and again Ling Tan spoke for them all. “If the times were right it is not a thing we would think of doing, for we would take care of our own daughter and marry her to a good man, but who dares now to marry or to take into his house even for his own son a young girl? Let it be as you say — only tell us sometimes if she still lives.”

“She will learn to write and tell you herself,” the white woman said kindly enough, and to this the others said nothing. In the old days Ling Tan would have laughed at the thought of a daughter of his learning to read and write, but now in these times when families were divided in many places, he could see the use of such learning.

In all this the eldest son had said not one word, and they had almost forgotten him and now he suddenly spoke for the first time.

“I want to see once more that one who was my children’s mother,” he said in a whisper.

Now no one had told him the whole of how Orchid had died and he had not asked, and suddenly Ling Sao did not want him to know all.

“Let me go first, my son,” she said, and she forgot to be afraid because now she was mother and this was her son.

“You may see her,” that white woman said, and as though she divined what was in Ling Sao’s heart she said, “I washed her and put on her fresh garments and she lies at peace.”

She led them as she spoke, taking the lamp from the table as she went, and Ling Sao followed, ashamed in her heart that she had been afraid of this woman because she was so kind, and while she had been telling her fear to others, this woman had been doing much for Orchid. She followed humbly and in silence and they all went into the temple hall where Orchid still was, and there the white woman lifted off the cover from Orchid’s face and so her husband saw her. There was no wound on that sleeping face, and the soft full lips were closed and smiling and she looked as she had often looked at night in her husband’s own bed, and as he looked the tears came up his throat and welled into his eyes and ran down his cheeks, and so did the tears come into the eyes of all except the white woman. She stood motionless and holding the cloth and at last Lao Ta turned away.

“Cover her,” he said and the white woman covered her.

Then they went out and while Ling Sao turned into the hall to wake the children Ling Tan and his son stood out in the night waiting, and the father felt his son’s sorrow and heard his smothered weeping and he drew him a little away from where the white woman stood waiting, too, and he said:

“Weep as long as there is weeping in your heart, my son, but remember that all weeping ceases at last. You are young and some day another mother will be found for your children.”

“Do not speak of it yet,” the son replied.

“No, I will not,” Ling Tan said, “but let yourself remember it.”

The young man did not answer, but the father knew that he had put something into him, not to lessen his proper mourning for his wife, yet to show him that his own life must go on for the sake of his family.

Inside the hall Ling Sao was dressing the children in all their garments and talking to Pansiao as she worked and telling her how she was to be left.

“You are not to be afraid,” she said, “and if I was afraid this afternoon it was folly, for that white woman washed and dressed Orchid herself and now she says you are to leave this city and go to a safe place and to school and learn to read and write.”

And she wondered, in spite of all she said, why the child was not afraid and she never dreamed the truth, that this young girl who worked so silently and never complaining in her house had longed ever since she knew how to long that she might go to just such a school.

“I will not be afraid, mother,” Pansiao said.

“And write as soon as you learn,” Ling Sao told her, “and we will have your third cousin read your writing.”

“I will, mother,” Pansiao said again, and she followed her mother to the door carrying the small child while Ling Sao carried the elder one, and they walked softly because of the sleepers.

When Ling Tan saw his daughter he, too, gave her commands for obedience and good behavior and then he turned to the white woman and committed his daughter to her in these words:

“To your mercy I give this worthless child of mine. It is a small gift and yet in her way she, too, is my flesh and blood, for in my house we have valued our daughters more than is done in some houses, and she is our last. If she is not obedient send her back and forgive us.”

For the first time Ling Sao saw that white woman smile, and she reached out and took the young girl’s hand.

“I think she will be obedient,” she said.

So then with bows and thanks they parted, and Ling Tan took his younger grandchild and Lao Ta took his own elder son in his arms, and they stepped toward the gate. But Ling Sao’s heart clung to her little daughter for a moment and she turned her head to see her once more and in the light of the lamp that the white woman held, she saw the girl’s face upturned to the woman’s. And Ling Sao heard that woman ask her daughter:

“Can you be happy with us?”

And she saw the young girl’s face was full of purest joy and she heard her say, “I can be very happy.”

As they went through the night together, hard as the road was to walk in the darkness and they dared not show a light lest the enemy see it and ask them where they went and why, yet Ling Sao found comfort in her belly because she was going home. In one part of her she knew there had been ruin in that home, for she had seen it with her own eyes, and yet she thought that her husband had mended more than he had, and so her heart expected to see the house as she had once made it and almost as it used to be before the enemy came. And Ling Tan had not thought to warn her of how it was, because he was so cast down by Orchid’s death and by what he had not told his wife yet, that their third son had gone to the hills.

All that long way home he kept casting about in his own mind to know how much he must tell her of the boy’s going and how much he could keep back. In his wavering between what he wanted to keep back and his long knowledge of her certain shrewdness which would smell out first that he was hiding something from her and second what he hid, by this and that he kept putting off until before he knew it there he was at his own house and it seemed to him that never had he made that journey from the city so fast, even though he had the sleeping child in his arms and it was night.

Ling Sao ran across the threshing floor and into her own gate and through the court into the house and she lit the bean-oil lamp which she knew stood in its own place on the table. There was a sort of table there but it was a board laid across two posts Ling Tan had driven into the earthen floor and when she saw this and saw all that the light showed her, she burst into a loud wail.

“Where is all I had?” she cried, staring around her. “Why, where are our chairs and the long back table and did you never find the pewter candlesticks? Oh, I thought you said you had mended and put things to rights!”

And as she wailed her quick eyes searched for everything she had once owned and she marked its loss. “Where is my little pair of side tables I brought from my father’s house — are they gone, too? Could you not find enough to put together again of the stools we had that were a pair?”

The two men had grown used to the room as it was, and they had half forgotten these other things because they were men and their daily work had not been to dust and clean and use the things she now mourned, which had been her pride to possess. They stood like idiots holding the children while she ran from room to room moaning and seeing this gone and that until she sat down and wept for everything, and the men had to lay the sleeping children down and comfort her, and they tried their best to comfort her each putting aside his own sorrow to do it.

“Oh, how can I keep house!” Ling Sao moaned, “and what have I to make me hold up my head among the other women? I used to have the best house, the best of everything, and now I have nothing!”

She did not know it, but she wept for more than this. She wept because she was weary and because her children were dead and scattered and because somehow she knew that the whole world in which they must live would never be the same as the old world she had lived in and loved. It seemed that once she had begun to weep nothing could comfort her and the two men gave over at last and the son went into his room and Ling Tan cursed and swore first that women could care so much for things of wood and pewter and pottery and then he cursed the war and that there was war at all.

“Curse all these men who come into the world to upset it with wars!” he shouted, “and curse them for spoiling our homes and fouling our women and making our life a thing of fear and emptiness! Curse such childish men that cannot have done with fights and quarrels in childhood but must still be children when they are grown and by their fights and quarrels ruin the lives of decent people such as we are! Curse all women who give birth to men who make war, and curse their grandmothers and all who are their kin!”

So he cursed himself hoarse and black in the face and then suddenly he too began to weep, knowing very well that sooner or later his wife would ask him where their third son was. When she saw him weep she came to reason and remembered she was a wife, and she wiped her eyes on her coat and came over to him and put her hand on his shoulder and said:

“Be quiet, old man. I know I have been a sour old woman to you, but I will be so no more. Here I am home again, and whatever happens I will not go away. You and I will stay together in our house — curse the enemy, but we will stay here!”

So he stopped his weeping and wiped his own eyes and she stood there as though she were listening. And then she lifted her head, still listening and asked what Ling Tan knew she would.

“Does our third son sleep so deeply he cannot hear his mother come home?”

Then he knew he could keep nothing from her, and that it was better that he told her all the truth. If indeed she was to stay here and if together they were to bear what must lie ahead, and whatever it was it could not be good, then their burden must be the same. And he told her heavily and with many breaks and sighs of that night when their third son had gone away, and she listened without a word or sound until it was finished. Then she asked no more.

“At least he lives,” she said.

“At least he lives,” Ling Tan said after her.

They went into their own room then, and lay down dressed as they were to sleep, and Ling Tan wondered wearily that after all these lonely nights he had no desire in him for this woman whom he knew he loved.

“It is more than weariness, though I am so weary,” he thought. “I feel now as if that thing between man and woman must be made clean again somehow before a decent man can think of it.”

To her he said, “These boards are hard after our big bed, but they cut the woven bottom into pieces and I have not found the rattan reeds to mend it.”

But she only said, “What do I care for that bed or for the tables or the chairs and stools or anything any more?”

Then he knew that she was wounded to her depths at last and that she could be no more wounded than she was.

… And yet changeless were the skies above all their trouble, the sun shone the same, the moon rose and set, the stars were there, and clouds and rain, and the season passed as always from winter to early spring, and life went on, and even their life.

There was a day long enough after Orchid had died and the youngest girl had gone and Ling Sao had come home to ruin, when there passed through the village one who would not stay, and he left in Ling Tan’s hand a letter. This letter Ling Tan opened and though he could not read it or know its full meaning until he took it to his third cousin, yet he knew its chief message. For when he unfolded the paper inside the envelope a braided cord of scarlet silk fell out into his hand and as soon as he saw it he gave a mighty shout and he ran into the house to find Ling Sao. She was in the kitchen behind the broken stove she had mended with mud, and he held the red cord up for her to see. At her cry the eldest son came out of his room where patiently he was feeding to his youngest child the pap that Ling Sao made of water and of rice she ground in their quern. And even he, his face still gray with sorrow, shouted out with joy.

There in this ruined house, in this village half destroyed and with no hope ahead, for the enemy ruled them as bitterly as ever, these three took heart because what this red cord told was that somewhere, and even where they did not know, but somewhere to Lao Er and to Jade a living son was born.