The Promise

II

A THOUSAND AND MORE miles away from where this old man slept in his courtyard in the sun, his third son, Lao San, stood in another courtyard.

This Lao San had in these days another name. Lao San, or Lao Three, is well enough for the name of a farmer’s son, but after the victory of Long Sands he had been made into a commander of other men, and his General, with his new rank, had given him a new name and this name was Sheng, and Sheng he was called from that day on.

He had been sitting until a moment ago, talking across a small porcelain garden table to the woman he loved who would not marry him. It could be said rather that she persuaded him to talk, drawing out of him by her shrewd questions all that he had been doing since they last met, more than two months ago. Then she fell silent, and her handsome head drooped as though she were thinking of what he had said. What she thought about he did not know, indeed. He loved her very well but he did not pretend that he knew her thoughts. She was not a usual woman when it came to the stuff of her brain. He could talk to her as though she were a soldier and she to him. But when she was silent she seemed always beyond him. Now she lifted her head suddenly, as though she felt his eyes, and smiled a small smile.

“You look beautiful in that uniform,” she said. Her smile twisted. “But why do I tell you? You know it.”

He did not answer this, for he never answered her when her red mouth twisted.

“How many characters can you write now?” she asked again.

“Enough for me,” he said.

“Then why did you not write me a letter?” she asked.

“Why should I write when I knew I was coming here in a month or two at most?”

“If you see no reason for writing to me, then there is no reason,” she said.

She took up her tea bowl in her hand and held it and he looked at that long narrow hand of hers, its nails painted scarlet. He knew the scent in her palm. But he did not move toward her. Instead he put his hand into the breast of his new soldier’s uniform and took out a handful of colored silk. She sat sipping her tea, her lips still smiling, and her great black eyes smiling.

“Here is the flag,” he said.

“You still have that flag?” she said.

“You gave it to me,” he retorted. “It was your command to me to come to you.”

It was true that when Mayli left Jade that day now six months behind them she had given this small bright flag to Jade and she had said, “Tell him I go to the free lands — tell him I go to Kunming.” To Kunming he had come after the victory. But when he had come she was not willing to marry him. She was still not willing, though he had been here for days and each day he had come to see her.

“Why do you keep that flag in your bosom?” she asked him.

“That you may remember you bade me come here,” he said.

He leaned over the porcelain table and looked down upon her upturned face. Behind his head, over the wall of the courtyard, she could see the high tops of the mountains which surrounded the city, bare mountains, purple against the clear winter sky. The day was not cold. It was seldom cold here, and in another climate it could have been spring. The light of the sun fell upon her face and his, and each saw the other’s beauty, how fine their skin was, the golden fine skin of their people, and how black were their eyes and how white.

“I ask you again if you will marry me,” he said. “Yesterday I asked and today I ask.”

Her eyelids fell. “You are very bold these days,” she said. “When you first came you would not have thought of asking me yourself. Do you remember how you found some one who knew a friend of mine and then through the two of them you proposed marriage to me?”

“I have little time now,” he said. “A soldier must go by the straightest road to what he wants. I ask you this — will you marry me before I march to my next battle?”

She lifted her lids again and he saw what he feared in her more than anything — her laughter. “Is it the last time you ask me?” She put the question to him as playfully as a kitten tosses a ball.

“No,” he said. “I shall ask you until you yield.”

“At least wait until you come back before you ask again,” she said.

Each of them thought the same thought — what if he never came back? But neither would speak it aloud.

“Do you know why you will not wed me?” he asked her at last.

“If I did I would tell you,” she said.

There was one more long moment between them, eyes looking into eyes. Then he took up the bright silk flag that lay between them and crumpled it and put it back into his bosom.

She rose. “Do you go?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Do you go because you must or because you wish?” she asked him. Now that he was going away she felt her heart pull at him to stay.

“What does it matter?” he said. “I have said what I came to say. There is no reason for staying longer today.”

She did not answer him. She stood near him, tall for a woman, but still only a little beyond his shoulder.

“I swear I think you are still growing,” she said willfully. “Can you blame me that I do not want a growing boy for my husband?”

“I do blame you for not wanting me,” he said gravely. “I blame you because you know we are destined for marriage. Do not our horoscopes promise us to each other? Are you not gold and am I not fire?”

“But I will not be consumed!” she cried.

“I am the man,” he said, “and you are the woman.”

The air around them was so clear, so still, the sunshine so pure, that their two shadows lay on the white stones beneath their feet as though they were one. She saw the closeness and stepped back from him and the shadows parted.

“Go away,” she said. “When you are finished growing you may come back.”

He gave her a long look, so long and fierce that she stamped her foot. “Don’t think I am afraid of your eyes!” she cried.

“Don’t think I am afraid of you,” he said sturdily, and turned and without another word he went away.

And she, left alone in the courtyard, walked here and there, and back and forth, and stopped in front of a cluster of bamboo trees and plucked off a smooth hard leaf, and tore it between her teeth into sharp shreds. When would she be sure of this man for whom her flesh longed? She would not marry a lout, and was he more than a lout? Who knew? A month ago he had been chosen by those above to lead other men. But it had taken him months to prove that he could lead something more than the handful of ragged men who had escaped with him out of the hills near his father’s house. For those months he had drilled in the common ranks of soldiers and at night he had learned like a schoolboy the strokes and dots and hooks that go to make writing and reading. He could read a book today but only if it were simple. And she did not yet know whether or not his mind were simple. Marry him she could, as women did marry in these days, and then cast him off. But she was not of such hot blood that she must marry for nothing but that. She wanted to marry a man whom she could love until she died and to keep her love he must have more than beauty — he must have the power to be great. Had he that power? She did not know.

An old woman in a black coat and trousers came to a door that opened upon the court.

“Your food is ready,” she said. She looked about the court. “Is he gone? I went out and bought a pound of pork and some chestnuts because I thought he was here.”

“I will eat them,” Mayli said.

“No, you will not,” the old woman said. “You are the child of your mother, who was a follower of Mohammed, and not while these hands of mine prepare your food will flesh of pig enter into you. I, who nursed you as a child in your mother’s house!”

“Why did I ever find you?” Mayli pretended to complain. For she had found this old woman in the city of her birth where now the puppet of the enemy ruled. In that way which poor people know everything about those above, this old woman heard that Mayli had returned from over the seas and so one day she came and told Mayli who she was and told such things about Mayli’s mother that she proved herself as the one who had been Mayli’s wet nurse. She, too, was a follower of Mohammed, else would the child Mayli not have been allowed to suckle her, and yet it was often an inconvenience now that she still made much of rites and foods which had no meaning for Mayli, reared far off from such ways in the land of the foreigners.

“Your dead mother put it into my mind to come to you,” old Liu Ma now said. “I felt her ghost stirring the bed curtains for two nights and I knew it was she because I smelled the cassia flowers she used always to wear in her hair.”

“My father still loves cassia flowers,” Mayli said. One reason why she had wanted the old woman near her was that she might hear these small stories about the mother who had died when she was born.

“Do you think you can tell me anything I do not already know?” the woman said. “What happened to your mother happened to me. I have forgotten nothing. Now come and eat.”

She seized Mayli’s hand in her dry old hand and pulled her toward the door into the main room of the house where Mayli lived alone with this one old woman. “Sit down,” she commanded and when Mayli had sat down she brought a brass bowl of hot water and a small white towel for hand washing. And while she did this she grumbled steadfastly.

“I will throw the pork to the street dogs,” she said. “It is dog’s food, anyway. But that great turnip of a soldier who you say is your foster brother — though it is only in days like these when all reason has gone from the minds of the people that a young girl has a foster brother! A brother or nothing — what is a foster brother but a man, and what have you to do with a man who is not your brother? It spoils the name of this house to see a tall soldier stoop his head to enter the gate. I lie for you, but can lies deny that he is here when any one on the street can see him come in? That hag in the hot water shop next door, she says, ‘I see your master is home again.’ And how can I say he is not the master here, when she sees him come into our gate?”

To such talk which the old woman poured out all day like water from a dripping fountain, Mayli said nothing. She smiled, smoothed her black hair with her long pale hand, sat down at the table in the main room of the house and ate heartily of the lamb’s meat and rice and cabbage on the table, while the old woman hovered about her, keeping her tea hot and watching her while she ate and always talking.

Now suddenly Mayli broke across that talk with a sharp look of mischief. She had eaten well but she did not put down her chopsticks.

“Where is that pork, Liu Ma?” she asked.

“It is in the kitchen waiting for me to throw it to the dogs,” the old woman said.

“Give it to me,” Mayli said, “I am still hungry.”

Liu Ma opened her old eyes and thrust out her under lip. “I will not give it to you, and you know it, you wicked one,” she said loudly. “I will let you starve before with my own hands I give you so vile a meat.”

“But if Sheng had stayed to eat with me as he often does, I would have eaten the pork,” Mayli said.

“I always know my place,” Liu Ma declared. “Of course then I would only wait to scold you in private.”

“Oh, you old fool,” Mayli said, still laughing. And she rose and swept past the old woman and into the kitchen and there on the edge of the earthen stove was the bowl of pork, very hot and fragrant, with chestnuts cooked in it. “It does not look like a dish ready to throw to a dog,” Mayli said, her black eyes still bright with mischief. “It looks like a dish an old woman puts aside for her own dinner.”

“Oh, how I wish your mother had lived!” Liu Ma groaned. “Had she lived she would have beaten you with a bamboo and made you into a decent maid! But your father was always a man as soft as smoke. Yes, he never made a shape for himself in anything. It was she who would have beaten you.”

By now Mayli had the dish on the table and she dipped into it with her chopsticks and brought out the best bits of sweet pork, crusted with delicately brown fat and tender parboiled skin.

“How well you do cook pork when it is a dish you never even taste,” she said to the old woman.

She looked at Liu Ma and suddenly Liu Ma’s brown face crinkled. “You young accursed!” she said laughing. “If you were not so much taller than I am, I would smack the palm of my hand across your bottom. I am glad that dragon’s son whom you call your foster brother is bigger than you. When he loses his temper with you after you are married I will not beg him to stay his hand. I will call out to him, ‘Beat her another blow, beat her another one for me!’ ”

“You old bone,” Mayli said gaily. “How do you know I will marry him when I do not know myself whether or not I will?”

… At this moment Sheng stood at attention before his General. This General was a man of the southwest, a man still young and hearty, who was in command of the armies of this region. He had a notable story of his own, being sometimes a rebel but now a loyal soldier against the common enemy. For in times of peace men will fight for this or that small cause, but when an enemy from outside the nation comes down upon all alike, then no man may fight for his own cause, and so this General had brought all his soldiers behind him and he had gone to the One Above and given himself and his men to the common war.

When he saw Sheng stand at attention before him he made a motion to him. “Sit down,” he said. “I have something to say to you, not as your superior but as a man to another man. I have had an order from the One Above that our two best divisions are to march into Burma. It is against my will and I cannot obey the One Above and put my command on you without letting you know that I do not approve the thing I am compelled to command you. Sit down — sit down!”

At this Sheng sat down, but he took off his cap and held it and he sat down on the edge of his chair so as not to show himself at ease before his superior. He kept silent, too, and waited, so that he might prove his respect. There were two guards in the room, standing like idols against the wall. To these the General lifted his eyelids and they went out. So the two of them were alone. The General leaned back in the wooden chair in which he sat and played with a small clay buffalo that was on his desk.

“Your father is a farmer, you told me once,” he said to Sheng.

“I am the son of the son of farmers for a thousand years,” Sheng replied.

“Are you your father’s only son?” the General asked.

“I am the youngest of three,” Sheng replied. “And all are living.”

The General sighed. “Then I may send you out to an unlucky war without cutting off your father’s life.”

“My father’s life is not in me,” Sheng replied. “He has my two brothers and they have sons.”

“And you, are you wed?” the General asked.

“No, and not likely to be,” Sheng said bitterly.

The General smiled at this. “You are young to say that,” he said.

But Sheng did not answer this for a moment. Then he said, “It is as well for one who is about to be sent into battle not to have a wife. At least I go alone and free.”

“You are right,” the General said. He put down the clay toy in his hand and picked up a brush. “Where is your father’s house and what is his name? I shall write him myself if you do not come back from this battle.”

“Ling Tan of the village of Ling, to the south of the city of Nanking, in the province of Kiangsu,” Sheng said.

The General dropped his brush. “But that is land held by the enemy,” he said.

“Do I not know that?” Sheng replied. “They came in and burned and they ravaged and they murdered wherever they could. I fought there together with the hillmen and we killed the enemy by the handsful, and then I came out because a handful now and again was not enough for the thirst in me for their blood. I shall be thirsty until I can kill them by the hundreds and the thousands. So I came out and I have spent the months learning until the battle of Long Sands.”

“That tells me why you have learned so well,” the General replied.

When he had brushed quickly the name of Ling Tan and where he lived he put down the brush and put his hands on the sides of his chair and fixed his eyes upon Sheng’s face.

“It is against my will that I send these two divisions to Burma,” he said. “I have reasoned with the One Above. I have told him that we must not fight on soil that is not our own, and this for two reasons. In the first place the people of Burma are not for us. They will not welcome us when they know we come to help those who rule them. They do not love the men of Ying who have been their rulers and when we come to aid the men of Ying they will hate us, too. In the second place, the men of Ying despise those not of their own pale color, and even though we come to help them they will not treat us as true allies. They will look on us as servants and they the lords, and shall we endure this when we go to succor them?”

“What does the One Above say when you tell him these true things?” Sheng asked.

The General leaned forward. “He says the men of Ying must know how small are their chances to hold their rule in Burma and they will be grateful to us. He says that since they need our help they will show us courtesy and we will fight by their side and win a great victory over the enemy at last.”

“Is the One Above so sure that we can win?” Sheng asked.

“Is he not sending our best divisions? You are all seasoned and young and strong.”

The General sighed and it was like a groan. “So he says, even though Hongkong has fallen to the enemy, and all know that the men of Ying gave that great city to the enemy as though it were a present for a feast day. I say, the men of Ying are doomed and if we go with them we are doomed. I have had all my life a knowledge of which way doom lay ahead, and I have that knowledge now. We ought to stay on our own earth and fight only from our own land. These men of Ying — have we reason to think they will change suddenly in their hearts to us? Have they not always despised us?”

The General fell silent and sat like a man of stone for a moment. But Sheng saw the veins begin to swell under his ears and on his temples and his clenched fists, which lay out on the table before him like two hammers, grew white on the knuckles and the veins in his wrists swelled. He did not lift his eyes to Sheng’s face and Sheng could not see what was in them. But after a moment this man began to speak in a low voice, thick as though he were choking.

“The men of Ying have treated us like dogs on our own earth! They have lorded it over us since they won those wars against us — opium wars, they called them, but they were wars of conquest. Their battleships have sailed our rivers and their soldiers have paraded our streets. They took land from us for their own. They refused to obey our laws and here in our country they have set up their own laws for themselves, and their own courts and their own judges, and when one of them robbed us and even when one of them killed one of us, there has been no justice. Their priests have paid no taxes. Tax free they have gone where they liked and preached their religion which is not ours. They have turned the hearts of our young away from our elders. They have sat at our customs gates and taken the toll of our merchandise.”

Suddenly he leaped to his feet and his wrath burst out of his eyes like lightning. He paced back and forth in the long narrow room in which they were. “And I am commanded to send my best young men to fight for these men who have despised us and trodden us down for all these years!” he shouted.

Now Sheng himself had lived always in his father’s house outside the city and the few times he had ever seen these foreign men whom the General so hated could be counted on the fingers of his right hand. Once or twice he had seen them on the streets, and once or twice hunting wild beasts in the autumn when the grass was long on the hills. He had stared at them and heard their loud voices and harsh language of which he understood not one word. But he himself did not know of all these hateful things they had done to his people. So now he listened and said nothing, because he had not knowledge of it himself. Moreover, he was a soldier. In these months he had learned to obey the one above him as he made his own men beneath him obey his smallest command, and he did not answer. He waited to see what the General would tell him to do.

So the General walked back and forth a few times, grinding his teeth together under his mustaches, and then he sat down again and slapped the table with both his hands outspread.

“What must be done must be done!” he said still loudly. “For many days I have resisted the One Above and I have held back my men. Now his commands have come down on me as commands from heaven and either I must obey or take my life. What use is it to take my life since then another would obey his same commands?”

He had told Sheng to sit down, but now Sheng rose, and he stood to receive his orders for battle.

“You will prepare your men to go to Burma with the others,” the General said harshly. “I myself will lead you. When we are at the edge of Burma we are all to encamp upon our own soil until we receive orders to march on.”

Sheng put his heels together and saluted and then he waited.

“Where we shall go from there is not yet clear,” the General went on. “It is said some of our men will be sent into Indo-China and it may be we will invade that land. The enemy promised that they would not enter the land of the Thai. But they did enter it. The Thais yielded to them in five hours. Everywhere the enemy is winning. They do not need arms to win — everywhere all are ready for them. It is only we who resist, though we die.”

The General sighed and leaned forward and clutched his hair in his two hands. “We go to fight in a battle already lost,” he sighed. “I know it but what shall we do to make the One Above know it?”

“Let your heart rest,” Sheng said sturdily. “If the battle has not been fought yet, how can we have lost it?”

The General sighed again. He lifted his head and looked at Sheng’s brave and honest face. He remembered this man when he had first come from the hills six months before. In six months it was hard to believe that so great a change had been made. Sheng had come as wild as a tiger, his hair long and shaggy over his eyes, and his garments ragged blue cotton such as peasants wear. Had he been a smaller man none might have noticed him and he might have been put into the common ranks and left there to work his way up. But Sheng was not a small man. He was a head taller than most men, and the strange thing was that he was still growing, though he was more than twenty-two years old. His hands were twice as large as a usual man’s, and his feet were too big for any sandals except such as were made to his measure, and all of his body was large to match. Even his eyes were large and the look he gave out of them was large and clear. Wherever he went men’s heads turned to stare after him and to cry out at his size. Thus because he was so large he was the more easily a leader among his fellows.

Yet had he been stupid or timid, of what use would his size have been to him? He would have been only a bigger lump of clay. But he was sensible and high-tempered and he learned eagerly, and he obeyed faithfully until he had learned. When he in turn taught another, he saw to it that he himself was obeyed, and while all his men liked him, still they were afraid of him, too, and so men should be of the one who leads them.

Besides all this there was yet another reason why he had risen so quickly to be a commander. He had proved himself well in this war. In the eighth month of the year the war was pushed into many new places, and Sheng had fought through that campaign, always well. He had come out with his life, too, and with only small wounds, and so when those higher than he were killed, he was moved quickly upward. Then in the ninth month in that great battle of Long Sands, it was he who led his men and another officer’s who had fallen, and had driven the last of the enemy out of the city. Behind that young giant the men gathered and followed with fresh courage, and he was so tall that he could be seen above them all and always at the front. When at last the battle was won it was the men left alive that day who sent their messengers to the General and begged him to give them Sheng for their leader. This wish was granted and these men were put, Sheng at their head, with others into that division which was famous for its bravery. And the General was so proud of them that he saw to it that these men had the best of everything, the best food, the best guns.

As for Sheng, he learned to cut his hair short as his General did, and he kept himself clean, and he wore a uniform, not better than his men had, for all dressed alike, but better that the ragged blue garments he had worn in the hills.

And still besides all this there was Mayli. Mayli had taken trouble to know the General, and to speak good words for Sheng here and there, gay words, half fun, so that none might think she cared whether this tall fellow lived or died. But she praised him sometimes where the General heard, and she told of the brave things he had done in the hills.

“I come from the city near where he lives,” she told the General, “and he is famous there for his strength and his bravery. Why, it is told there that wherever he met a small company of the enemy he would capture them alone with his two hands and an old gun. And his skill at surprising the enemy made him the talk of all the countryside and the children and the common people made songs about him in the streets.”

This was true, and she sang one of these songs which she had heard on the streets of Nanking.

“A dragon sits upon the hills,

He sleeps by day, he hunts by night.

His belly fills

With what he kills

He wins in every fight.”

The General laughed at the rough song, but still the next time his eyes fell on Sheng he remembered it and it made him think even better than he had of the huge young soldier under his command.

And be sure that Mayli had something too to do with Sheng’s looks. She could by her laughter send him away determined to change himself, though at the time he might refuse to do what she wished. He swore to her always that he would stay what he was and that if she would not love him as he was, then let it be so. But as long as she did refuse to love him, when he left her he made the change she wanted, and she was clever enough when he came back to her with some change she had wanted, not to speak of it or seem to notice it, so that he would think she had forgotten it. But she was kinder to him by a little each time that he did what she had wanted him to do.

And yet she knew that she could never rule him. He loved her and told her he did, but she knew that he would never love her better than all else. Yet she knew that she must love him better than all besides or else she did not love him enough.

Here was the middle of the road where these two stood on that day when the General told Sheng to prepare to lead his men to Burma to fight by the side of the men of Ying.

“I have only one thing to ask,” Sheng now said to his General. “How shall we get to Burma?”

“How can we, except on our own feet?” the General retorted. “There is no railroad. We go by the Big Road.”

Sheng considered this awhile. “And our food?” he asked.

“We will get it where we can as we go,” the General replied.

Sheng considered again. “And when do we go?” He inquired.

“In four days,” the General answered.

Now as soon as Sheng had received these orders, he saluted his General again and turned and went out. It would take two days to prepare his men for the long journey, but not more, for they were hard and ready. But they ought to have some hours in which to tell their women good-by and to eat a good meal or two of the sort they would not get while they fought, and a few more hours to make an extra pair of sandals apiece, and all such things that men must do when they prepare for a journey which is new to them and from which they may not return.

And then, when he came out of the room where the General was, when he had passed the guards who saluted him, it suddenly came to Sheng that he, too, was one of those who might never return. For he knew very well that this would be the bitterest battle that he had ever fought. To lead his men a thousand miles by foot over mountain and river, dragging their field guns with them as they went, carrying their guns on their backs, eating as they could find food, and then at last to fight on foreign soil, their comrades men of strange blood and unknown temper, this was gravest hazard.

He stood for a moment outside the gate and the people passed him. The street was bright with the hard clear sunshine of winter, but it grew gray before him. It would be a long time before he could see again that woman whom he loved. What if he never saw her again? He turned to the left instead of the right and strode through the crowd, head and shoulders above them, toward the south of the city where Mayli lived.