The Promise

XIII

HE WAS AWAKENED BY some one stumbling over his body. Before he could rise another fell over him and another. He sat up with a roar.

“You big turnip!” he bellowed and flung his arms out and grasped a leg. The man fell on him and they fought for an instant and then together staggered to their feet.

“Your mother!” the man cursed. They glared at each other. “You an officer!” the man shouted when he saw Sheng’s shoulder signs. “Asleep, when the command has come down to march instantly! Our allies are in a trap, you sleeper! Where are your men?”

Sheng’s jaw went slack and he rubbed his face with both hands. Then without a further word he put out his two elbows and made a battering ram for himself and so he charged his way through the running crowd of men.

How long had he slept? Not surely for more than an hour. The sky was glittering with stars, and the silence of night was deep over the valley. He seemed still to hear the echoes of music in his ears.

“I am an ox,” he thought, in shame. “How was it I fell asleep?”

He caught sight of one of his own men and pushed his way to him.

“You, Little Crab!” he shouted. This man was called Little Crab because he was one of two brothers and because he had once received a wound in battle which had shortened his left leg so that he walked as though he were going sidewise.

“What is all this noise?” Sheng went on. He pulled Little Crab aside and they left the others and went a rounder way to their tent which was still shorter because it was out of the crowd.

“How do I know?” Little Crab retorted. “I am only a small soldier and nobody tells me anything. But when the women were making a play about how a girl student was captured — how she killed six of the enemy by poison upon her lips before it was discovered — in the midst of this a messenger came running from the General to say that we were marching within the hour, for the white men are trapped southward beyond the river, and there they are, all mixed together, advance and rear and troops, and the dwarf-devils are attacking on all sides. The white men have no food and no water, and unless we can reach them in time they will die like beasts.”

Sheng’s answer to this was to push ahead and leave Little Crab to limp on. In a few minutes he had reached the General’s own headquarters and there he found the other commanders gathered already and waiting. If there was any doubt in the General’s mind now he showed no shadow of it on his face. He stood behind his desk, in his hands papers which he read as he gave his commands in a low sharp voice.

“You, Pao Chen,” he said, “are to form your men into the middle ranks. Yao Yung and Chan Yu, your men are to be the two wings.”

He looked up and his darting eyes caught sight of Sheng, and a flicker of laughter shone in them for a moment.

“You, Sheng, look as thought you had been asleep in a briary bush,” he said, in exactly the same voice.

Sheng put his hands to his head. In his haste he had left his officer’s cap on the ground where he had fallen asleep, and he felt dried bamboo leaves in his hair. He combed them out hastily with his fingers, and his face was scarlet.

“I am a water-buffalo,” he muttered. “Let there be quiet around me and I fall asleep like a beast.”

“There will be no quiet for the next days,” the General said grimly. “You are to be the vanguard. Your men must leave within this hour. You are to lead south and then bear west. You will cross the next river at the first ford, and that must be as soon as you can, for it is not trustworthy that the bridges further down still hold. The enemy is in a circle, or so it is said, around the white men.”

“I am willing enough to obey you,” Sheng replied and saluting, his hair still on end, he turned and walked quickly from the room. When he had reached the door he broke into a run, and nearly overturned the doctor who was hurrying toward the General. Chung’s face was as pale as the handful of papers that fluttered in his hands.

“Is the General there?” he shouted as Sheng ran past him.

“Where else?” Sheng bellowed back over his shoulder. In the darkness a woman stepped quickly and lightly along behind the doctor, but Sheng did not turn to look at her.

As for the woman, it was Mayli, and at the sound of that voice she stopped and stared after the young man’s hurrying figure. A flickering lamp swung over the doorway of the General’s door, but its light was lost here. Upon the threshold Chung turned and called back to her, “Don’t delay — there’s no time! We cannot start until we have our orders clear.”

She pulled back her wondering mind. There was no time indeed, and indeed why should she wonder? There were thousands of young men with loud voices in the army, and why should she think of Sheng?

“I do not delay,” she said firmly, and entered the General’s room.

… Before midnight the march was begun. Whether or not the white men could be succored before it was too late was now the question, but every small old enmity was put aside and each man and woman thought only of the honor of his own people, that now it was they who went to rescue those who had always behaved as lords and masters to them.

“They look to us for once,” the General had said brusquely to them all. A scornful pride had glittered out of his eyes and made his voice harsh. “We have never been fit for anything before, but now that they are trapped on all sides by the East Ocean dwarfs, they need us. Well, let us show them what we are!”

In this spirit every man did his duty and so the march began. It was not to be made in one day or even two or three. The terrain was their enemy, and the roads were few, for the white men had built few great roads through this land in the days of their rule. Small old country roads had now to be followed, roads rough with dried mud and broken ancient cobbles and rutted with the wheels of rude farm carts. Sometimes there were only paths, so that they had to walk singly, and twice they struck through the jungles with no paths, but this at least was in full daylight because of the snakes and the leeches and such hateful creatures. And it was not enough to watch what crawled under their feet. The skies must be watched for the enemy planes that went to and fro among the clouds, trying to discover just such aid as this to the beleaguered white men.

“We are safer in the jungle with the snakes,” Sheng told those men who followed him.

Now all put on their green coats and wound branches of trees about their heads so that from above they would be the color of the earth and so less easily seen. And Mayli, walking with her women, bade them, too, wind branches about their hair. They were very pretty, she thought, watching them, and so young that they made a game even of this trick against death, laughing at each other, and one bending to twist another’s crown of green more gracefully, and some were careful what leaves they chose, and Pansiao found scarlet jungle flowers on a vine and twisted them into her crown, and her round merry face under the flowers made them all look at her and smile.

And Sheng was in the vanguard, pushing on ahead of all the others, and Mayli and her women were in the rear, and still those two did not meet or know that they were part of the same battle. Across the grave business of the day and the night, even through the weariness of the march, each thought for seconds, for a moment, of the voice and the look that had been like, and yet how could they be one another’s? And still the war carried them on, a part of itself, and separating them with the heavy duties each had to do, so that there was no time for thought or dreaming.

Each night when the company halted, Mayli must make sure that her women were fed and that they were safe for the night, and Sheng, when his men had eaten their rice cakes and dried beancurd and dipped up whatever water could be found to drink, must pore over his maps and send out his spies to see what could be learned about the enemy and about the trapped white men.

By now the whole countryside knew that the white men were encircled and a sort of glee was upon every face. It was an evil merriment, and Sheng took it as an enemy thing, for it was against them, too, because they went to the aid of the white man. Especially it was against every hapless man of India, who lived in these parts, for the people of Burma hated the people of India heartily, for they thought those Indians had come into Burma and had taken work and rice that belonged not to them but to the people of the land. Everywhere Sheng found this hatred as he pushed the spearhead westward and southward, and Sheng three or four times saved an Indian or even a family of them from the hatred of the people of Burma. One of these left his comrades out of gratitude and followed Sheng for a whole day. But at the end of the day Sheng felt his devotion a burden and he called Little Crab to take the dark fellow away and let him live among the men.

“I am not easy with his eyes always on me and his leaping forward to help me wherever I move,” Sheng said.

For so the Indian did, Sheng having saved him when some Burmese had drenched him with oil and set him on fire. So from that day on Little Crab took care of the man and somehow told him what to do, and the man obeyed him like a dog.

Now the General had appointed Charlie Li to come with Sheng, for Sheng was still a man of the hills to some degree and not used to being far from home. But Charlie was a man of any country where he set his foot, and he read people as farmers read the clouds and winds and he caught the thoughts of people like the breath from their mouths. So in the nights that they were upon this march he came back each night to Sheng and told him what he had found, for by day, in his beggar’s garb, he wound in and out of the people on both sides of the march and ahead of it, and now he had enough of their language to know half what they said and to guess the rest.

“A generation will not undo the hatred we are making for ourselves, that we side with the white men in this war and not with our own,” he told Sheng sadly. “It is we, they all say, who are betraying our side of the world. The enemy is spreading it everywhere that it is only we who help those who have ruled us. If it were not for us, and this is what I hear everywhere, the war would be won by now, they say, and the white men gone.”

Sheng sat apart from his men at night to talk with Charlie, and tonight he sat on a rotted stump near the edge of a jungle where they had encamped well away from a village, so that if any came near they could see him coming. All around the encampment soldiers were awake and watching, for well they knew their danger. He sat there, his big slender hands clenched on his knees, his knees apart, and his head up and his eyes watching. He did not cease to turn his eyes here and there as he answered Charlie.

“If I had not suffered what I have suffered at the hands of these East-Ocean dwarfs, and what I suffered I will tell no man, if I had not seen what I saw in the city near my father’s house and if I had not seen what happened in the village of my ancestors, men I might have said that these people do well to say we have betrayed our own. But I have seen and I never forget. White men I do not know. I never spoke to one since I was born. But the East-Ocean dwarfs I do know and I have seen them, and they are my enemies until I die, and after I am dead I will not forget.”

His voice came out of the night like low thunder and he went on. “Do I love the white men whom I have never seen? Am I a fool? No, it is not to save the white men that I sit here tonight, my feet on this earth that is not mine, whose sands and winds are strange to me. But if the white man is the enemy of my enemy, then the white man is my friend.”

“The country is rotten with spies,” Charlie said. He pulled his ear restlessly. “Among the priests nine out of ten are for the Japanese. Among the people not one will lift his hand against them.”

“Then these people are my enemy, too,” Sheng replied heavily. He rose and looked out over the dark alien land spread around him. He sniffed the night wind. “Even the winds smell evil,” he said. “There is a rotten smell to them.”

“It is the jungles,” Charlie said. “The jungles are rotting.”

They were silent for a long moment, each unwilling to speak out his fear to the other.

“I am going to sleep,” Sheng said at last, his voice as hard and dry as a dog’s bark.

“Well, I will sleep an hour or two and then be on my way,” Charlie replied. “I shall meet you somewhere or other. Do not look for me, but before night falls again I shall fit my footstep to yours.”

“By the third dawn from this we should be there, unless the white men have retreated still farther,” Sheng said.

“Retreat!” Charlie repeated. “They cannot retreat. They have not a single road open to them now. And they do not know how to travel without roads for their machines.”

The two young men laughed without mirth and so parted.

… In silence the march went through the last day. By now the General knew to the third of a mile where the white men were waiting for rescue. He had communication by messenger with the American but he did not rely on it. The American was even more strange here than he was himself. No, he thought through that last long day, he must lean only on himself. To fight this war was beyond the white man who knew well only his own kind. He was filled with a strong scorn of these white men, all of them, who had left their countries to come here to fight among people whom they could not tell one from the other. He smiled bitterly many times as he marched that day, on foot like his men, his face spotted with shadows from the tree twigs around his hat.

“These white men!” he thought in mingled fear and scorn. “They cannot tell one brown face from another. Let an enemy stand before him and say he is a friend and the white man does not know the difference.”

For his spies had brought back hundreds of stories. The enemy did not wear a uniform but went in a pair of drawers and on their feet were only sandals or rubber-soled shoes and they mingled with the people of the country who clothed themselves thus, and the white men took them all for one, not knowing the language of any of them. Here they had ruled for hundreds of years, and yet they knew not one face from another nor one tongue from the next.

“And we go to rescue these,” the General groaned, and his scorn grew so high that when the American commander sent through his orders again in the afternoon where he was to go and what he was to do, the General crushed the papers into the palm of his hand and threw them away.

“I must trust to what wisdom I have of my own,” he told himself.

Be sure that his scorn filtered through his voice and eyes and words, so that all of those whom he commanded felt it and breathed it in without knowing it. They went to join their allies, and yet they put no trust in those allies, even with all good will to do so. For some had a good will, and even those who had none knew that at least they had no choice. They must fight beside the white men or against them and to be against them was to join the enemy and this they could not do.

Then, too, who did not remember the Chairman as he had stood before them the last time? His high voice had cut through the air like a whip above their heads.

“You bear our honor like a flag,” the Chairman had cried. “Now let the white men see what we Chinese can do. If we acquit ourselves well I do not doubt that they will accept us at last as full allies in this war against the East-Ocean enemies. Where else shall we look for allies against these who would take our country for theirs, except to the men of Ying and Mei? I still put my faith in their victory. Obey that one, therefore, whom I have put over you. Not that you need a white man to be your leader, but he is to stand between you and the men of Ying, who are harsher and less friendly to us. And yet we must all be allies. Show that one what soldiers you are. Our whole people look to you. Men! I command you!”

Behind them as he spoke had stood that lady, and as the Chairman shouted these words she had raised her small clenched fist over her head.

The General remembered her as she stood there, a beautiful creature, but was she too not foreign? Often men had talked among themselves that it was she who kept the Chairman the ally of the white men. For she had spent the years of her childhood abroad and she had been nourished by the earth and wind of a country not her own. It was said she spoke their language better than she did her own. Certainly she spoke her own with a foreign curl to the words — book words, too, she used, long ancient words that came out of classics now dead, and she seemed not to know the sharp new short words of today. But then she lived apart from common folk indeed, being a lady, her ears jeweled and rings upon her hands.

He lifted his head to free himself of all these useless thoughts. He was a soldier and he had a soldier’s duty ahead, clear and simple. He knew his enemy, at least, whether or not he knew his friends. He looked at the watch upon his wrist. By dawn tomorrow they should be over the river and in sight of the white men — if those men were still alive.

… As for Mayli, she was that night entirely sleepless and with more than weariness. The smell of battle was in the air. All knew that tomorrow there would be battle. But for her it was the first. Now for the first time there would be men bleeding and dying and having to be cared for. Could she do her duty? She felt ashamed of all the uselessness of her life until now. She had lived softly and easily, apart from her own people. She had been a child abroad, and there among foreign people she had grown up. Yes, and even now she had not become a part of her own people. They were something of hers — a blood she shared, a nation whose citizen she was, but she was not a part of them as they were a part of one another. She longed at this moment not to be able to speak any other language except the one that her own people spoke. She wished she had not foreign memories.

“If ever I have time,” she thought, “I shall read and read again, but not foreign books this time, and only the books of my own people — the old poetry and the old philosophy. I want to find my roots.”

And then it came to her that perhaps she never would have this time, for she might be killed, and she wept a little, secretly, in the night, putting her hands to her mouth to still herself, for she lay among her women and they could have heard her. As it was, Pansiao did hear her, for this young girl still waited to see where Mayli laid herself down and she came and put her pallet there. She woke and lay still for a moment and then she put out her hand in the darkness and touched Mayli’s cheek and found it wet. So startled was she to find that this one, too, could weep that she burst into her own tears, and then Mayli had to speak sharply to her, knowing that only sharpness could stop a sort of reasonless weeping like this, which might indeed sweep over all the women like a panic.

She sat up at once and took Pansiao by the braid of her hair and shook her a little. “Stop!” she whispered, “stop or I shall punish you like a child!”

And Pansiao did stop, terrified by fierceness in the voice she loved, and then Mayli lay down again cured of her own sadness.

“What is there for me,” she thought, “except the one duty I see clear ahead?”