The Promise

XV

THUS BESIDE THE BODY of the dead English boy did Sheng and Mayli meet. Had these been other days they might have taken time for surprise, but surprise of some sort came to them every day in this strange land. When anything could happen and none could foretell what he would be doing or where he would be an hour ahead, not Mayli nor Sheng felt surprise beyond the first outcry. Each took the other’s two hands, and they stood, their hands thus strongly clasped, their eyes searching each other’s faces, and each felt now what the other felt, a comfort that was beyond speech. Gladness there could not be, for they stood in the midst of defeat and death, but courage poured through their hands to their hearts and in that instant he forgot his jealousy and his doubt of her.

He saw her face streaming with sweat, her hair hanging wet upon her forehead and at her neck. She had on a rough straw hat such as farmers wear and the fading green twigs were twisted about the crown. She was bone-thin, he saw, and her blue cotton uniform clung to her thinness, wet, too, with her sweat. Her feet were bare in straw shoes, and her sleeves were rolled above her elbows.

And she saw a tall gaunt young man, hard as leather, in a dirty uniform. Down that dark face of his the sweat poured in lines like rain and dripped from his chin. Indeed the sun was merciless upon them both. There were no trees except the squat growth of the jungle and the wounded had crawled to these small spots of shade and lay panting for water. Near them a shadow-faced Indian began to moan softly for water,

“Pani-pani—” he moaned.

They turned at the sound of his voice, and saw that his shoulder was torn away and that he was bleeding to death. Now Sheng even before he spoke to Mayli, dropped her hands and went over to the dying man and opened his own bottle of precious water and put it to the man’s lips, and he lifted the man’s head upon his right hand so that he might drink more easily.

“Oh, he will die anyway,” Mayli cried in a low voice. “Save the water for yourself—”

But Sheng let the man drink and drink until the last was gone. Then he put down the man’s head into the hot earth, and even as he did so the man died.

“The water is wasted,” Mayli said in the same low voice.

“It would have choked me had I refused it to him,” Sheng replied. He corked the empty bottle and slung it to its place and then he turned to her again and took her one hand and held it in his.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“Here,” she said, “with my women.”

“And I have been dreaming of you in that little house with the foolish small dog you love better than you do me,” he said.

“And I thought you were anywhere but near me,” she said, her cracked lips smiling.

“It was you I heard singing that night we marched,” he said, “and I thought it could not be you.”

These few words they said to each other in the midst of the men who lay wounded and dying and sunstruck, and each knew that even this moment must end because of their duty to these others. Indeed the women were stealing curious looks at them already and so they unclasped their hands.

“I will seek you out tonight,” Sheng said.

“I shall be watching for you,” she said. And then it seemed to her she could not wait until night of such a day as this, for who knew at the end of the day who would be living and who dead?

“Take care of your life,” she said to him and her eyes pleaded. “Be sure that the night finds you safe.”

His hot dark face seemed suddenly to flame. “Do you think I could die? Tonight, after the sun sets.”

He turned and strode off among the men who strewed the ground and she watched the tall thin figure for seconds, until she felt a small hand creep into hers.

“Who is that tall man, sister?” She heard Pansiao’s voice whisper this at her shoulder. For now Pansiao had begun to call her sister, and this Mayli allowed, knowing how lonely the young girl was. She turned her head and stared down into Pansiao’s wondering eyes. Then she began to laugh.

“How could I have forgotten you!” she cried. “Well, I did forget you, you little thing. Why, that is your brother, child — your third brother! We have found each other.”

Now Pansiao did stare after the young man but he was already gone among the men. “Shall I run after him?” she asked.

But Mayli shook her head. “There is no time now,” she said. “We have our work to do. But tonight he will come back, after sunset,” she said, “and you must help me to watch for him.”

She drew Pansiao with her as she spoke, and together they stooped over an Englishman who was crawling on hands and knees to find the small shadow of a wrecked truck. His head was hanging so she could not see his face.

“How can I help you?” she asked.

With mighty effort he lifted his head at the sound of her voice and at her English words. Then she saw that which put out of her mind everything except the man’s misery. The lower part of his face was gone. He had no mouth to speak with, no jaw nor nose. Only his frightful eyes stared up at her in agony.

She bent and Pansiao helped her and they took the man under the shoulders and dragged him to the hot shade of the truck. She laid him down so that at least his head was in the shade and she took a hypodermic from her little case she carried with her and she shot the needle into his arm, and let him clutch her other hand. Then when she felt his hold weaken and saw his blazing eyes grow dim and dull, she put his hand down upon the dry earth and left him. There were others whom perhaps she could save.

… Here was the misery of that day, that while they did their work the great retreat went on. Living and dying, they had to move and move again. She knew that battle was roaring about her, but she gave no heed to it and worked steadily on with her women helping her and the doctor operating in a truck under an awning. Yet even so the order would be cried out over their heads that they must move still farther to the rear. For a battle is not a thing which can be seen whole. It is made of many small movements and many men and women and each is a part of a whole which he cannot see or understand. He must move when the order is cried at him, and he moves in the direction he is told, but why he does not know nor can he ask.

All through that hot day Mayli turned from wounded men to wounded men and new ones were brought continually to die or to struggle on with life. When she grew faint with weariness she looked at Chung and knew that still she must not rest because he did not. He had tied a towel around his head to keep the sweat out of his eyes, but the sweat poured down his cheeks and down his bare arms and it dripped off his fingers as he cut and sliced human flesh and tied veins and arteries and as they followed to bind where he had cut, bandages were wet with the women’s sweat, but who could dry himself in this most pitiless heat? They drank whatever water they saw, and into buckets that were brought from some drying filthy stream Chung poured a bottle or two of stuff and some salt and let them drink. Only with recklessness could life be lived now in the midst of death and when at any moment death might come out of the skies or out of the bush about them, why hold back from water for which they were famished?

Mayli watched her women narrowly to see how they bore the day and they bore it well, or so she thought. Pansiao, whom she had feared for most, bore it best of all. In the midst of all the heat and blood and dead, Pansiao came and went, fetching and carrying this and that, her small face cheerful however hot. Once she came near to Mayli and Mayli saw her smile.

“I keep thinking of tonight,” Pansiao whispered.

She was a child indeed, and Mayli smiled back without speaking. In all this horror Pansiao could think of her own joy tonight. Her little mind had chosen to see no meaning in horror any more. She watched a man die and could feel nothing because she had seen it too often before, and death was part of life for her now. Blood and wounds and stench she let pass by her and she fixed her mind on something of her own. Today it was the thought of her brother, but yesterday it was a bit of sweet stuff she had found in a shop and bought for a penny and the day before that a kitten lost on the roadside. Tomorrow it would be something else.

Siu-chen, the young girl who had been a student in an inland school, and who was an orphan since the attack on Nanking, was crying as she worked. Now and again she lifted her hands all soiled with blood and dirt and wiped her eyes and her face, always ruddy, was splotched with blood not her own. But Mayli did not fear for her so long as she could weep. Nor did she fear for Hsieh-ying who cursed and swore as she lifted the heavy bodies of men to her back and carried them across the battlefield, or took the light ones in her arms like children. Mayli could hear her cursing and swearing to herself as she came and went.

“Oh my mother and my mother’s mother, and look at all this waste of good men! Oh, these devils and may their fathers be turtles and their mothers’ private parts rot away.” Then she screamed, “Why, I know him, this one with his legs gone! Captain!” she cried to Mayli, “he is the man who drove the truck — do you remember? He was such a hearty good man. Come here, my poor one, and let me get you to the doctor—”

Chung shouted at her not to bring him such men as this for how could he put two legs on a body? But Hsieh-ying bawled back at him that though her own mother were cursed she would pick up any man that looked at her with living eyes, were his skin white or black, and did he have legs or not, and the only ones she left were the ones already dead and would she leave this one whom she knew? But the man died as she spoke.

It was a strange thing that in this dreadful day when the enemy did not cease for one moment to harass them from the sky and from the jungles, in their frantic weariness they took time and strength to quarrel together, now Chung and Hsieh-ying and now bitterly any two who must come together as they worked. As often as the enemy weapons burst upon them, so often men’s tempers, or women’s, burst out in too much fear and weariness and heat and hunger. And worse than anything was the pitiless glare of the angry sun that grew steadily more fierce as the day went on.

But so long as they could shout and swear at each other or weep Mayli felt her women safe. Only when they were silent did she keep watch of them, and the two silent ones were An-lan and Chi-ling. These two worked without let all day, and when at late noon a little food was sent around, Chi-ling shook her head and would not eat.

Mayli went to her. “Eat,” she said to Chi-ling, “I command it.”

Chi-ling shook her head. “I cannot,” she said, “even though you command me. I would vomit it up.”

At that Mayli let her alone, and only watched her sharply as she and An-lan worked side by side, for between these two had grown up a sort of friendship, as though in their silence they found comfort.

So the long day drew on, and always more heavily, for by mid-afternoon all knew that the battle was being lost. Defeat was in the smell of the air, in the dust, in the heat. None spoke the word, but all knew, and the mounting of that knowledge swept through them like an evil wind.

The General knew it without waiting for his messengers to tell him. He had led his own men that day, endeavoring with all his heart to clear the road for their retreat. But so evil was the enemy, and so clever in his evil, that whenever a road was cleared in one place it was blocked again in another, and it was this endless blocking that held them constantly in trap. Now the General cursed the foreign machines indeed, for these machines were useless when their engines stopped, and like the heart in a human body, it was the engine which was most delicate and vulnerable in them. Again and again the enemy dragged the dead machines together across a road and made a fort behind them and sprayed the road of retreat with fire.

“We are tied to these machines!” the General roared to his commanders. “Would that we could trust to our own legs and leave the cursed things here to rust and rot!”

Yet how could they leave these instruments and vehicles in which their allies trusted? Because of machines men must follow roads and upon those roads the enemy rained down fire from heaven and sent out fire from the jungles, and everywhere and always the enemy found them because they could not take shelter and leave the roads.

When night came at last, they halted, knowing that in the night the enemy would block the road they must travel tomorrow and that the people of the land, who were their enemies, would help them and hide them and by the side of the enemy send out their bullets.

These bullets, Sheng discovered, were anything the people could find. The enemy had good bullets, newly made and of a sort that burst quickly and with a spray of fine metal that tore the flesh in twenty places. But late in the day, before the halt was called for the night, Sheng felt a sting in his left upper arm. He was at that moment in a narrow fork of road that led out from the main road, and the hour being late he was looking for a place of encampment for his men. He put his hand to his arm but before he could find the cause of the sting a rain of metal points fell upon the handful of men who were with him and they bent their heads and ran from that place. When he was somewhat safe again in the main road and well away from the danger of trees near by, he felt his arm and to his own amazement he found the head of a nail as neatly in his arm as though a carpenter had hammered it in. He jerked it out by the head and found a nail between two and three inches in length, and he gave some good curses as he held it up between his thumb and forefinger.

“See this,” he said to his men. “This is what they fell us with now.”

“That nail,” his aide said, “is from no enemy, be sure, but from one of the men of Burma who join the enemy against us. These Burmese have no good weapons yet, having been long forbidden by law of the white men to carry arms at any time, and so what they have are old weapons they have stolen or kept hidden against this day, and having no bullets for them they shoot out nails or scraps of any metal they can find.”

Slow dark blood now was dripping out of the nail hole, and Sheng let it run awhile to cleanse the wound and then he tore a strip from the tail of his coat and bound it up and went on with his work. That night they encamped in no bypath but in the middle of the main road, whence they could watch on all sides whoever came near, and he spread his men out fanwise through the near-by jungle, the outer ones on guard all night, while the inner ones were to sleep until midnight, when it was their time to stand guard.

When all was ready for the night and the weary men had eaten the poor food that was all they had until new supplies could be sent up from the far rear, Sheng bade his next officer take his place for awhile and then alone he went down the road a mile and more to where the wounded were, to keep his tryst.

Now as he came near, his heart beating and leaping in his breast, he saw instead of the one he expected to be waiting for him at the edge of the encampment, the figures of two. In the moonlight that shone hard and as clear, almost, as sunshine upon that jungle road he saw Mayli’s head lifted and listening, but clinging to her hand with both hands was a shorter younger figure. His ardent heart chilled. Why had she brought a stranger to their first meeting? Was she to begin again that fencing, playing and delay which had held him off so long? He grew angry at the thought.

“There is no time for such delay any more,” he thought. “She must have done with it. I will have her deal with me now as truly as though she were man instead of woman.”

He strode forward, quickening his step with anger, and so she saw his face surly when he came near. She did not speak. She gazed at him and waited.

“Who is this you have brought with you?” he asked shortly.

Then she understood the cause of his anger and she laughed. “Sheng!” she said, “you know her.”

He cast a look or two at Pansiao but carelessly, so eager was he to be alone with Mayli. As for Pansiao, she lifted her little face timidly and looked with wonder at this tall harsh-voiced fellow. Was this indeed her third brother? She remembered him as a reedy, sullen boy who had been like a storm in his father’s house. And yet she remembered, too, that sometimes when she was very small he had let her ride the waterbuffalo to the grasslands with him and there upon the peaceful sunny hills he had not been surly, but kind. He had pulled the sweet grass that had its tender silvery tassels folded inside green sheaths and drawing them out one by one he had held them before her open mouth and she had licked them in with her tongue while they laughed. And she could remember that sometimes he had sung to her.

“Do you remember the song you used to sing about farmers hoeing in the spring?” she now asked him suddenly.

And she lifted her voice and sang a snatch of it in a clear quavering trill.

“Why, how do you know that song?” he asked her. “It is a song of my native hills.”

“Because I am Pansiao,” she said, faltering under his stern dark gaze.

He stared down at her and drew in his breath and pulled his right ear. “What a thing I am,” he said, “that I do not know my own sister — if you are my sister,” he added, “being here in this evil hole and how you are here I could not think if I should think the rest of my life.”

Now his surly looks were gone and he was all eager and amazed, and he gazed into Pansiao’s face and the more he looked the more he saw it was she.

“What is the name of my sister-in-law?” he asked.

“Jade,” she said, quickly.

“And what is the number of my brothers?” he asked.

“Two,” she said happily, “Lao Ta and Lao Er, and you are Lao San, and our house is built around a court with a small pond in the middle and there are goldfish in it, and in the summer there is matting over the court and we eat there, all of us together, and my elder brothers’ little boys run to and fro and — and—” she put her hand to her mouth. “Oh poor Orchid,” she whispered, “I have not remembered you for so long and you are dead!”

“The two boys also are dead,” Sheng said shortly.

Pansiao gave a wail of sorrow. “Oh, but they were so pretty, those two little boys!” she wept, “and I remember that the smallest one was so fat and soft when I held him and he always smelled of his mother’s milk, like a little calf!”

There in that strange and lonely place, in a short hour of peace in the middle of the night, with the soldiers sleeping about them and the moans of the wounded in their ears, the brother and sister drew near to each other in longing for the home where they had been born.

“Let us find somewhere to sit down,” Mayli said gently.

But where was there to sit in this evil place?

“We must not go near the edge of the wood,” Sheng said. “The snakes are very swift here and deadly. We must stay where we can see the ground clear about us.”

There was a broken truck near them, turned on its side and blasted partly away by an enemy shell, and upon this they sat, Pansiao between Mayli and Sheng. The mosquitoes sang shrilly about their ears and out of the night there came the sounds of the jungle on either side of them, those sharp sounds of restless small beasts, moving through the night, and sometimes they heard the stealthy crackle of twigs bent under the foot of some larger creature. There they sat in the hot moonlight and the memory of that farmhouse so many thousands of miles from here crept into them like a sickness.

Now they both fell silent for a while, and Pansiao stretched her memory and Sheng sat dreaming, forgetting all except his home, and those from whom he had sprung. Who knows the paths of the mind?

… It so happened that at that very moment Ling Sao, too, was thinking of her third son and she lay sleepless upon her bed. She who at night always fell upon her bed and into sleep at the same instant was now uneasy because of new evil that had befallen the house that day.

Ling Tan could not sleep because of it and he lay at her side, still but wakeful. On this day he had heard from his two elder sons, who had heard it in the city where they had gone to sell new radishes, that the war was lost in Burma. From there, how many thousands of miles away, had the evil news come. It came by secret voices in the air, it came by whispers spoken behind hands and into waiting ears, and now many knew that Burma would be lost and because of this, years must pass before they could be free again.

So Ling Tan that day saw his sons come back gloomy from the city, though their baskets were empty. “What are the devils doing now?” he had asked them. In these days he himself went no more to the city, but used what strength he had upon the fields.

“It is not the devils this time but the white men in Burma,” Lao Ta told him, and he sat down on a bench at the door and sighed and let his baskets drop, and took out his little bamboo pipe and stuffed it with a dried weed they used instead of tobacco nowadays.

Now this Lao Ta since he married the woman he found in his trap had grown sleeker and more fat than he had ever been in his lean life and this was because his new wife made him secret dainties and slipped into his bowl all the little best meats she could without being seen. She had made him give up his traps, too, and she had done this by persuading him that he must help his old father more.

“This you should do being so good an elder son,” she had said, and she praised him always and coaxed him with her praise and without any force she had him little by little doing what she wanted.

But indeed this was the woman’s power in the house that she could coax so sweetly and with so much love that it was a pleasure to yield to her. All she did was without any wish for herself, and her love poured out for them all and all loved her. With Jade she never took an elder’s place but she cried out with wonder at Jade’s learning and her prettiness and she worshiped Jade’s three sons and especially the two she had delivered at a single birth. Lao Er she served and praised and let him think he should have been the eldest son with so much wisdom as he had, and Ling Sao she studied how to spare and Ling Tan she spoke to as her master. Only to her own husband, Lao Ta, did she show her one great constant wish that she might have a son before it was too late, but of this too she spoke with only such anxious love for him that he was moved to comfort her instead of blaming her. “Leave off fretting for a child,” he told her often, “I am pleased with you, though you are barren. These are ill times for children anyway.” But still the woman prayed to Kwan-yin night and morning with her beads between her fingers, and still she hoped.

Therefore Lao Ta was cheerful enough these days so that gloom showed on him when he felt it, and all had shared his gloom when he told them what he and his brother had heard that day. They sat late in the evening talking of it and planning what should be done if Burma fell.

“Those white men,” Ling Tan said again and yet again, “I never dreamed it that those white men could fail. Why, their guns — their weapons — how could it be?” And he thought sadly how little worth their promise was if Burma fell.

“Years it will be for us if we are shut off,” Lao Er said sadly and his eyes sought Jade’s.

“Are our children to be brought up as slaves?” Jade cried out. Now Jade had sat silent all this while, and at her sudden cry they all turned to stare at her. At this she burst into tears and ran out from the room.

Ling Tan looked at his second son’s grave face. “What does she mean?” he asked.

“It is her great fear that our children will not know what freedom is,” Lao Er answered. “So far she has been hoping beyond reason that the white men would vanquish the enemy quickly, and she knows that for this Burma is our last hope.”

“She always knows too much,” Ling Sao sighed. “That wife of yours, my son, she knows as much as any man.”

Ling Tan spoke again to Lao Er. “If you want your sons to grow up free then you must leave this house.”

“What?” Ling Sao cried at this. “Am I to let my grandsons go out and be lost like my third son?” And she put her blue apron to her eyes and wept aloud and Lao Er made haste to comfort her.

“Now, my mother,” he said “why will you always reach the end before there is the beginning? Have I said I am taking your grandsons away from you?”

“No,” Ling Sao sobbed, “but if Jade wants to go, you will.”

“How can we take three small children out secretly?” Lao Er urged. “It is only a dream of hers. We will not leave you.”

But Ling Sao would not be comforted, “If Jade is dreaming, then I am afraid,” she said, and though Lao Ta’s wife brought hot tea to soothe her, she would not drink it, and so at last they parted and went to bed, and still none was eased.

Now in bed Ling Sao lay and thought how great a sorrow it would be if there were no children in the house and it would be worse even than if she heard her third son were lost, and then she felt herself wicked to think thus of her own son and she began to yearn for Lao San and soon she fell to weeping softly.

Now Ling Tan heard her weeping and he spoke sharply from his pillow. “Give over weeping, woman, your tears should be dry by now with so much trouble as we have had,” he said.

“Am I to have my life end childless?” she cried out.

“You still think of yourself,” he said heavily. “But you and I, old woman, we are as good as dead. Can we let the little ones grow up as slaves? Jade is right.”

At this Ling Sao wailed afresh and he being very weary in his old age could not be patient with her for once and he reached out his hand and slapped her cheek. “Give over — give over—” he shouted, “lest you make me weak, too.”

At these words, she paused, and, not minding his fierceness, she put her hand and touched his cheek and found it wet. Now she was quiet.

“You, too?” she whispered.

“Be still,” he muttered, but his voice broke her heart.

“My dear old man,” she said and yielded up her will. Let come what must — let come what must.

… And in the hot night Sheng sat frowning and remembering and Pansiao, beside him, remembered, too, and Mayli let them be alone, as though she were not there.

Pansiao put out her hand and Sheng took it and held it.

“Ai, my little sister,” he said sadly, “why are you here? It is worse for you than for me. What can be your end?”

“But it is very lucky for me to have found Mayli and now you,” Pansiao said cheerfully. “It might have been that I was here all alone,” and so she told him how it happened that she had come here by one chance and then another.

“You have been like a leaf on a river,” he said, “borne along without knowing how or why.”

“But now I am quite safe,” she said cosily, “now I am with both of you.”

Over her head those two, Sheng and Mayli, looked at each other, and well they knew what each was thinking. Though they longed to be alone, how could they tell this young and trusting creature to leave them even for a little while? They had not the heart to be so cruel, and so they sat listening while she prattled, and looking at each other over her head.

And what she prattled of was always home and again home. “Do you remember how Jade used to try to teach me to read, Third Brother?” she asked. “I wish I could show her now how many letters I know and read to her out of my little book. I have the book still in my pack.”

“Yes, she does,” Mayli said. “I have seen her reading it sometimes.”

“I learned to read it in the white woman’s school,” Pansiao said, “where I first saw you, Elder Sister,” she said to Mayli. “And the moment I saw you I knew that you—”

She turned to look at her brother with sudden thoughtfulness. “The moment I saw this elder sister I said she would be a good wife for you,” she said.

Sheng laughed aloud. “So have I always said the same thing,” he told Pansiao, “and so I still do say. But can you get her to agree with us?”

Now Pansiao was all eagerness. She took Mayli’s hand and brought it to Sheng’s upon her knees and she put them together under her two little rough hands and held them there.

“Now you t-two,” she said, stammering, “you two — ought you not to agree?”

And as though to humor her Mayli let her hand lie under Sheng’s, and Sheng closed his right hand strongly over her narrow one and held it and above these two clasped hands Pansiao’s hands pressed down, quivering and hot. “Will you not agree with us?” she said pleadingly to Mayli.

“Child,” Mayli said, “is this the time or the hour for such talk? Who can tell what tomorrow will bring to any of us?”

“But that is why we should agree together,” Pansiao said anxiously. “If we were sure of tomorrow — there would be no haste. But when there may be no tomorrow, should we not agree tonight?”

“She is right,” Sheng said in his deep voice.

Then Mayli felt her heart drawn out of her body. Would it not be strength to make her promise to Sheng and so be secure at least in that?

Then as though Heaven would not give her even so much, before she could speak they heard the sound of running footsteps and there was An-lan, pale in the moonlight, gasping with running, and her eyes were staring black in her pale face. She ran to Mayli as though the other two were not there and she shouted as she ran,

“Oh, you are here — Oh, I have searched for you everywhere! Chi-ling — Chi-ling has hung herself upon a tree! She — she is there!” And An-lan pointed to the further side of the encampment.

Mayli leaped to her feet and ran toward the place she pointed and Sheng came behind her. Behind him Pansiao stood still but none thought now of her. They ran to the further edge of the jungle, beyond where the men lay behind the barricade of their vehicles, and there upon a gnarled low tree whose small fan-shaped leaves quivered even in the silent air, they saw Chi-ling, a slender shape hanging loosely from a branch.

Sheng took out his knife and cut the cloth that held her and caught her as she fell and laid her on the ground. It was Chi-ling indeed, and she had torn her girdle in half and made a noose and by it had taken her own life.

But was her life quite gone? Mayli stooped and felt the flesh still warm. “Run,” she bade An-lan. “Run — find Chung!” And she began to chafe Chi-ling’s limp hands and to move her thin arms. In very little time Chung was there, girding himself as he came, for in the heat he had been sleeping nearly naked, and he stooped and felt Chi-ling’s heart. He shook his head — the heart was still and she was dead. They rose and An-lan stood gazing down at her with no tears in her staring eyes, and only grimness on her mouth.

“Did she say nothing to you, An-lan?” Mayli asked gently. “You two were such friends.”

“Nothing,” An-lan said. “We ate our meal together tonight as we always do, she and I, a little apart from the others for the sake of quiet. Then afterwards she did what you told us was to be done for the wounded. She did for hers, and I for mine.”

“I saw her,” Chung said slowly, “not above an hour ago. She came in to tell me that one of the Australians had died. But I had feared he would. There was gangrene in his wound and my sulfa drugs are gone. But she knew that he might not live — besides, he was a stranger to her.”

“She always took every death too hard,” An-lan muttered. “I told her — I said, we shall see many die, and what are we to do if you behave so each time?”

“What did she say?” Mayli asked.

“You know how she never answered anyone,” An-lan said. “She did not answer me. But I was speaking thus even as she went to the young dying man and it must be that when she saw him die, she came here to the jungle and died, too.”

“Let us go and look at that dead man,” Chung said. “It may be she left some sign on him.”

“But we cannot leave her here,” Mayli said quickly. “The jungle beasts would have her — the ants, the wild cats — they say there are tigers here, too.”

Sheng stooped. “I will carry her,” he said, and he lifted Chi-ling’s dead body over his shoulder, and so they went into the encampment. An English guard peered at them.

“Who goes there?” he asked.

“A nurse has killed herself,” Chung said shortly.

“Oh, I say!” the guard murmured. He lowered his gun and put up the mosquito netting that hung from the brim of his hat and stared at Chi-ling. “Why, that girl,” he said aghast, “she passed me not half an hour ago, and I said she had better not go out alone, but she pushed by me, and I let her go — it’s hard to argue with them when they don’t speak English.”

“Put her down,” Chung said to Sheng. “The guard will watch her until we come back.”

So Sheng put Chi-ling down and Mayli stooped and straightened her body on the ground and there she lay peacefully, the white moonlight on her face.

“I’ll watch,” the guard murmured.

They went on silently then to the place where the young man had lain upon a pallet on the ground and there he still was, dead. But there was neither sign nor message there from Chi-ling. Only when they looked closely did they see how ordered was the young man’s body, his hair smoothed, and over the foulness of the gangrene wound in his lower belly there lay a handful of fragrant leaves of some sort.

“She put those leaves there,” An-lan said.

So they stood a moment and then Chung said, “Let us go back and bury her. In this heat it will not do to let her lie. The young man others will bury, but let us bury her for she is ours.”

So they went back, and there beside the road in the edge of the jungle they dug a hole with sticks and a shovel that Sheng found and An-lan and Mayli put green leaves into the hole and they laid Chi-ling among them and then when the earth was covered over her Sheng and Chung together lifted the log of a fallen tree and laid it across the grave to keep the beasts away.

When all was done, Sheng and Mayli looked at each other and Sheng said in his old rough way, “Now I must get back to my men and you back to where your duty is.”

They looked and Pansiao had come up and she was watching them, but silently, her eyes strange and startled. They did not heed her, nor did they heed An-lan who sat on the end of the log, her head in her hands. Chung had gone already.

“Let us meet as often as we can at night,” Sheng said. “Keep watch for me, and I will find you when I am free.”

She nodded, and he went away and when she saw him gone, she went over to An-lan and put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Come,” she said.

And An-lan rose and now Pansiao came near and she was silent and afraid, and Mayli put out her hand and took Pansiao’s, and so in silence the three went into the encampment to sleep, if sleep they could in the few hours until dawn would come again.