The Promise

XXII

THE THREE YOUNG ENGLISHMEN looked at Mayli. She saw in these three pairs of pale eyes the white man’s old doubt. Chinese! Friend or foe?

“You need not be afraid of me,” she said quietly. “Even if I am not English, still I am only a woman.”

“Are you alone?” the first young Englishman asked. He had lowered his gun, but he still grasped it so hard that she saw his thin dirty hands were white at the knuckles.

“No, I am with four others,” she replied. “We escaped from the battlefield today.”

“What battlefield?” he asked.

“Did you not come from the road?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Quite the opposite,” he said. “We’ve been wandering through the jungle for days without seeing a road. We don’t know where we are. We had an idea we were going toward India, you know, but not seeing the sun rise or set in this beastly green darkness we may be entirely wrong.”

She took from her pocket the little compass Chung had given her. “You are going southeast,” she said.

“Good God!” he said in a low voice.

The Englishmen forgot their fear in their dismay and they lowered their guns. One of them, a short square fellow who had been thickset and was now so thin that his flesh hung on him, took off his ragged sun helmet and scratched his head that was bald from heat and filth. The third, the youngest, turned very pale under the grime streaked on his unshaven cheeks. “Do you mean all this time we’ve been walking in the wrong direction, Hal?” he asked of the first one.

“Looks like it,” that one replied.

He buttoned the ragged coat that was open over his naked body. “Are the Japs south of us or where?” he asked Mayli.

“They passed through here this morning,” she said, “going north and east. How far from here they are now I cannot tell.”

“If they were here only this morning,” he said, “then we ought to move quickly. But where? We’ve been running from them for days. They were behind us up there—” he nodded northward. “We thought that we were getting away from them.”

“We must get out of this jungle,” she said. “We cannot see anything until we are out of it. I will call my friends.”

She lifted her voice and called. “An-lan — Pansiao — Siu-chen — Hsieh-ying!”

At the sound of her voice the women, who had until now been hiding behind the bushes came timidly out, Pansiao clinging to Hsieh-ying’s hand. They looked at each other, English and Chinese. The men, Mayli could see, were not too pleased. Women, they were doubtless thinking — women would be a burden.

“We can walk as swiftly as you,” she said, “we are used to walking with the armies.”

“Think of comin’ this far to find a lot of women!” the short one remarked.

“Shut up, Rick,” the first Englishman replied. There was a long moment of shy silence, then he shouldered his gun. “Well, come along, everybody,” he said, “we’d better be on the march again.” He tramped off in the direction in which they had come, the men taking the lead and the women falling in behind, single file.

Now these two kinds of people, men and women, light and dark, walked hour after hour in the sultry dusk of the jungle, each kind dubious of the other, and therefore continuing in silence. Once and again they muttered together concerning each other. Thus the Englishmen, glancing backward at the women, spoke in low voices:

“The little one doesn’t look more than seventeen,” one said.

And another one said, “They’d be pretty if you didn’t remember your own girls.”

“They’re too yellow, too thin, and I don’t like their eyes,” the third one said.

“Still they’re girls,” the first one said.

“I suppose you’d call them that,” another answered.

The women spoke freely, knowing the men could not understand them in their own language. “Are all Ying men tall and thin and bony like these?” Hsieh-ying asked Mayli.

Mayli could still smile, hot and tired though she was. “Ying men come fat and thin as any other men do,” she said.

“They scare me,” Pansiao said plaintively. “Their eyes are cruel blue, and their noses are like plowshares. Why need they have such noses? Do they smell as dogs do?”

“They come from their mother’s wombs with those noses,” Mayli replied.

“They looked like peeled fruit,” Siu-chen said. “Why should their skin be red?”

“The sun burns them red instead of brown,” Mayli said.

And then being women they fell into yet more intimate talk. “Are these men as other men are?” Hsieh-ying asked, for she was one who had a warmth toward men and this she could not help, although for shame’s sake she hid it as much as she could.

“Certainly they are,” Mayli said with coolness.

“My flesh pimples to think of sleeping with such gawks,” Hsieh-ying said.

Mayli smiled drily. “I am glad to hear that,” she said and the women laughed.

Yes, they could laugh, looking at these Englishmen and seeing their knobby bare legs and tall lean bodies and lank necks burned crimson, so young were these women even after the sorrows of the battle and the plight they were now in.

“It is their hairiness which I cannot bear,” An-lan now said. “I never did like hairy things such as cats and dogs and monkeys, and these Ying men are covered with hair. Look at their beards!”

“They could not shave for all these days,” Mayli said.

But An-lan said, “How can they shave themselves all over? Look at their arms and their legs, as hairy as their chins, and did you see their bare bosoms? The hair was as thick on them as the hair on a dog’s breast. Have they hair all over their bodies under their garments?”

“I have never seen a Ying man without his clothes,” Mayli said shortly. “Nor any other man. But I think white men are not as hairy as dogs.”

With such talk they lightened some miles of walking, but it could not go on forever. They must think of food and shelter and as night came on of sleep. So when afternoon wore on to evening Mayli called to the Englishmen and she said,

“Had we not better talk together and decide what we should do about food and shelter? There is no end to the jungle yet, and somehow we must eat and sleep.”

The men stopped at that, and waited for the women to come up.

They sat down on fallen trees and they wiped their faces with their sleeves and plucked broad leaves and fanned themselves. The gnats and midges were thick about their heads and they needed to keep the leaves moving against them.

In a moment the short Englishman leaped up, “God, I can’t stand this,” he shouted. He slapped his bare legs and knees. In the orange red hair that grew on him there were entangled dozens of small insects. Now Hsieh-ying had been staring at him with large eyes, and she had smelled the leaf she held and it was very pungent, and she perceived when she crushed it that it gave out a yet stronger, hotter odor. So she went over to the man and motioned to him to rub the leaf up and down his legs, which he did, and the insects disliked the rank smell of the leaf and so he had a little peace from them.

“You’re a good girl,” he told Hsieh-ying and Mayli translated it and it made Hsieh-ying laugh behind her hand.

Yet so poisonous was that leaf that he had scarcely said this when his legs began to itch, and he began to scratch and yelled, “Damn, I believe that leaf was poison!” and they all looked at his leg and Hsieh-ying stopped laughing, and what between this and the insects, they all decided against staying and so they took up the march again. But now Mayli and the tallest Englishman walked side by side to talk, since they were the leaders and the others walked behind, together, too, and no longer separate.

The more the Englishman looked at Mayli the more he liked her. “It’s luck that we should fall in with someone who can speak English,” he said. “Perhaps we can help each other.”

“It is not easy for women to travel alone in this inhospitable land,” she replied.

“Shall we make a sort of plan?” he asked her next.

“I have been thinking what we could do,” she said. “If we could strike the great road which leads into India, it might be best for us all to go in that direction for I know there are no main roads into China. But I have often heard that there is a great road leading into India.”

He pressed his swollen lips together. “You are wrong,” he said brusquely. “There is none.”

“No road to India?” she exclaimed.

He shook his head. “That is why the retreat is so hard—” he said slowly, “the roads are narrow, old winding roads and they are clogged with people. Besides, nothing leads directly into India.”

For a moment she could not answer, so astonished she was. She had heard many times of the fabulous road into India, a hundred feet wide, hard as a floor, fit for great armies to march upon. “What incredible folly of your generals,” she cried, “to bring into this country armies too few for victory, and knowing that there was no way for retreat!”

“You don’t say anything that I do not myself say,” he told her. “I’ve said it over and over. But that’s the way it is. Dunkirk was easy compared to this. I was at Dunkirk, mind you. It was only a few miles of water we had to cross and all England turned out to help. We knew England was there, you see. But here — hundreds of miles of this horrible jungle — and England thousands of miles away. Even India—” he broke off and Mayli saw that he was fighting against tears.

She asked herself, “What are we here for?”

But he cried aloud, “What are we fighting for in this damned country? That’s what all the fellows said. If we win the war we’ll get this country back with all the rest of it. If we lose the war we’ll not have this anyway. This isn’t the place to fight. Why, we can sink men into this hole by the tens of thousands and never win. It isn’t a fit battlefield for white men!”

This she heard, and she did not answer. She looked around the jungle. No, it was not a battlefield. The trees trembled above their heads, and vines swung in the branches. Around them the underbrush spread in a thicket. Great grasses stood high above their heads wherever the trees parted enough for the sun, grasses wet with rain, and leaves as huge as plates. She paused now beside one such big leaf that held water from the last rain like a bowl and kneeling she drank the water from it. There had been three rains in the hours during which they had walked and they had drunk thus again and again. No, it was not a country for a battlefield. But how many had died upon it! She thought of the General and of Chung, and of all those others whom this morning she had left dead and yet she had not the heart to reproach this tired and confused man who walked beside her. He was no more to blame than she was. He had been sent here and he was here.

They took up the march again and for a few moments they did not speak. Then she said gently, “Shall we march all night or dare we rest?”

“Let’s keep going,” he said, “as long as our legs will move.”

From then on they said nothing except what had to be said.

At last it was dark and they could walk no more. “Let’s stop here where we are,” the Englishman said. “We’ll tramp down the grass. I don’t think we ought all to sleep. We three men will walk around the rest of you in regular beats and keep off the snakes that way, at least, and hear the beasts if they come near.”

“We will all take our turns except Pansiao,” Mayli said. “Pansiao must sleep because she is young yet.”

“No, nonsense, you women must sleep,” he protested, “I assure you—”

But Mayli said, “We are used, we Chinese women, to doing as men do.”

Thus passed that night in the jungle, between sleep and walking, and the dawn came early and they went on their way again.

… Now what is there to tell of such a journey as theirs? The weariness numbed their brains and dulled the feeling in their flesh and bones. Fatigue passed into deeper fatigue and they grew drowsy while they walked so that the leeches stuck to their ankles and legs and they did not feel them until one saw another’s and plucked it off. Blood dripped down from such wounds and the danger was that they would bleed too much and they watched each other the more carefully for that. The skies were cruel today and the rain came down only once so that they were thirsty all day and faint, although they were too weary for hunger, and a great craving for salt fell upon them all more than for food. Today they did not speak to each other except the few words that must be said, for talk took breath and strength. The Englishman held Mayli’s compass and they pushed steadily westward and yet who knew whether this jungle stretched north and south or east and west? They could only press on, hoping that somewhere it would end.

Late that evening they came upon a muddy winding river and looking down that river they saw a swinging bridge of bamboo. This cheered them greatly for it meant that men were near, and they went toward it. Yet all knew that the men might be enemies and so they approached the bridge and crossed it half fearfully. A small beaten path led through lower jungle along the other side of the river and this they followed until it came toward a village set beside the river, and on the other side of the river the jungle had been cut back to make small rice fields, now very green with new rice and yellow with harvests, too. For the whole year in this country was so warm and wet that men could sow rice in one field and harvest it in the next, and there were no seasons.

They halted when they were in sight of the village, and talked together of what to do. “We men will go and scout,” the Englishman said.

But this Mayli would not allow. “If you are captured or killed then what of us?” she asked.

So it was decided that she and the tall Englishman would go forward and the others would stay behind. If they came back, all would be well, if they did not, then the others must go on as best they could. Yet when Pansiao was told this she would not stay behind and so she went, too.

“Your sister?” The Englishman asked, glancing at the slender girl who put her hand in Mayli’s.

Mayli was about to answer no, and then she thought of Sheng, of whom she was always thinking now, and she said, “Yes — my sister.”

The villagers in that place were only some six or seven families, and they had lived here in great peace and knew nothing of the war except that they had heard of a disturbance beyond the jungle. Not one of them could read or write and they heard nothing from the outside even of the war, nor did any come to them, and so they did not know enough to hate one kind of man and love another. So remote was the village from all the world, that not once a year did a man leave this place to go out nor did a man come here from elsewhere, for what was there to come for since these people only lived to raise food for themselves and there was nothing to buy or sell?

Here Mayli and Pansiao and the Englishman came with steady steps and watchful eyes. It was late afternoon, and the men were in the fields, and the women, too, except a few old ones and children, and when they saw the strangers they let out cries and others came running from the fields, and for a moment they all stood staring at the strangers and making a few sounds of speech to each other, which the three could not understand. But they were kindly looking people, cheerful and childlike, and healthy except for some festering insect bites, and some sores on the men’s legs from standing too long in watery rice fields. The more Mayli looked at their faces the easier she was.

“I believe these are only peasants,” she said to the Englishman. And she put on a hearty smile and opened her mouth and pointed into it to show she was hungry. Immediately there was a chatter among the women and they climbed the ladders into their little houses set on posts above the river edge and they brought down cold rice and fish in large leaves. This they offered to the three, who when they saw the food felt their hunger grow intense and they took the food and ate it in a moment. At this the villagers laughed out loud.

“We can stay here safely,” Mayli said.

“Looks like it,” the Englishman said.

And Mayli pointed up the river and held up five fingers to show there were five others and they went back again toward where the others were and the villagers followed them at a little distance. When they saw the five then great talk burst out, and they circled them as they went back to the village, laughing and talking and staring very much at the guns the three Englishmen had, but seemingly without knowledge of what these were.

Then the women brought out more food, and all ate and they drank cold fresh water which was very sweet, and in a little while there was great friendliness among them all. The children pressed near to stare and the women laughed and talked together in their own language and the men handled the guns. Now it could be seen that not one of these men had ever seen a gun before and the short Englishman grinning and wanting to amuse them lifted the gun to his shoulder and shot a small bird that sat on a branch and it fell dead. At this the villagers screamed in sorrow and terror and they ran back from the visitors.

“Oh,” Mayli cried. “Why did you have to show what you could do with your gun?”

“I was only in fun,” the short Englishman stammered. “I thought they’d like to see it.”

“Not everybody is as ready to kill as you are,” she retorted and she said to the tall Englishman, “Quick — pretend you are angry — pretend to punish him!”

So the tall Englishman strode forward and slapped the other’s cheeks. “Take this,” he said, “don’t utter a word. I’ve got to do it — she’s right.” He shouted at the man and jerked his gun away from him and he took the gun and offered it to the oldest man of the village. But this man would not have it and all the villagers backed themselves away from the dreadful thing, and so the Englishman took all three of the guns and set them in a row against a great tree that was there. When the villagers saw this they made much talk among themselves and no one went near the tree, and so at last the danger was past.

Now night came down again, and again food was eaten and a fire was built in the center of the village against the mosquitoes and the men brought out mats and slept near it but the women slept in their houses. No one asked the Chinese women into the houses and Chinese and English slept on the ground to the windward of the fire, on branches they broke from the trees. And they slept as well as though they were on beds for they were fed and the smoke drove the insects from them.

… Now they stayed at this village three days in all until they were rested and washed, and all tried to help the villagers as best they could. Mayli used her skill to tend the festering sores the villagers had, and this made them grateful. She had no medicines, but she boiled water and washed out the sores and used a sort of wine they made from soured cooked rice, and she motioned to those who had these sores that they must wash them with boiled water and then with wine and allow the sun to shine into them every day, and they understood her and even in three days she saw these sores begin to heal. Be sure the mothers brought sick children to Mayli, and an old man pointed to his chest and rumbled a deep cough to show her what was wrong with him, but she could not heal them all.

Yet in less than three days she began to be anxious to be gone from the village, for the two white men could not contain themselves but must act as though they were lords of the village. And one began to follow about a pretty girl of the village and Mayli was frightened when she saw this and went to the tall one.

“You must tell this fellow to stay away from the girl,” she warned him. “These people will not allow it.”

“I’ll tell him,” he promised.

But of what use is the promise? She saw that these white men without meaning ill, nevertheless angered the villagers in a score of small ways. They did not believe such small brown men were altogether human as they themselves were, and the brown men soon saw this and grew sullen, and on the morning of the third day Mayli said to the tall Englishman, “It is time that we went on before trouble breaks out between them and us.”

“They’re hot-tempered beggars,” he said. “I believe it’s their peppery food. They eat too much of it.”

At this she lost some of her patience. “You treat these villagers as servants,” she said. “You forget we are only guests.”

At this he said in a very cold voice, “After all, Burma does belong to us, you know.”

She laughed aloud. “Will you never know you are beaten?” she cried.

And suddenly she remembered all that Sheng had said against the white people and at this moment she agreed with him and she went on furiously, “How is it that you cannot understand even now that our lives are dependent on the people? Will nothing ever teach you? Do you wake up only when you are dead, you English?”

Over this honest good young face, so very young, now that he had shaved it with a razor he borrowed from a Burmese that day, she saw a bewildered stubborn surprise. He did not know her meaning and she saw that anger was no use, and scorn was no use, for he did not know why she was angry or why he could be scorned. The words went into his ears but they beat against a wall in him somewhere and came back again without entering or leaving an echo. “Come,” she said, “we must be on our way — there is no other salvation.”

Nor did she want to stay behind with her women in this village, for what would happen to them if they stayed? No, the white men were their allies after all and they had no others.

So she went that day to the old man who was, she knew by now, the head of the village, and she made signs and asked him for the path, and he understood and made signs that one would guide them out of the jungle to the roads, and so that day they left the village which had treated them so kindly and went on their way again, though what that way was who could tell?

… Now Sheng had been traveling too, and those with him. This journey had been made harder by a curious thing. That Indian had begun to show a mighty hatred of the solitary Englishman, so much so that Sheng saw it and he said to Charlie, “This man of India will do harm to the white man if he is left alone with him. Do you see how he has his hand always in his bosom where he keeps his knife?”

That Indian did have a knife, but it was a strange short one, not more than four inches long, but the edges of it were ground very fine and sharp.

“I have seen his hatred when he looks secretly at the white man,” Charlie said. “It is an evil thing that none of us speak his language to ask him what his hatred is.”

“We must keep our eyes on him day and night,” Sheng said. “Not for love,” he added, “but for justice.”

This they did although their task was made harder because the Englishman lived altogether ignorant of the Indian’s hatred and came indeed to treat him in small ways like a servant, and the Indian obeyed him when he pointed at something he wanted done, but his eyeballs swelled with fresh hatred when he did so.

Now they pressed steadily north, and though none knew it, the jungle ended much sooner northward than westward, and they struck a clear road which led toward the west. They halted there and took much thought as to whether they would go east or west. Eastward Sheng would have gone if he could, but the first village toward the east was full of the enemy, and luckily they found this out before they went far, because Charlie, who was ahead, saw a handful of enemy men drinking tea at a small roadside inn and he fled back to the others and immediately they all turned westward.

This was the same road to which the villagers had led Mayli and the others, but how could anyone know this? Yet so it was, and so all traveled the same road. But Sheng and the men with him went more quickly than Mayli and the women could go, and each day Sheng came nearer to Mayli, so that the time must come when they would meet. This came about one day near midday at a certain small town, and this was the circumstance.

By now Mayli and her women and the Englishmen had come to a good friendship. That is, each knew the other’s faults and could bear with them. Mayli indeed had come to know the English very well and it seemed to her through those men that she knew entirely why the battle of Burma had been lost, and yet why they were not to be wholly despised because they had lost it. She had come to this knowledge by watching and by talk. Thus she saw by watching that these men never lent themselves to any time or place with understanding, but they were as they had been born, men of England. They were good and they were honest. Never, she told herself, would she have believed that men could be so honorable toward women as these were toward hers, and this in spite of lust enough in them at any time to have done what was evil had they been evil in heart. The short one, indeed, could not keep his eyes from following a woman wherever she walked but he could keep his lust only in his eyes. As for the tall one, and this was the wisest one, he was such that she could not but like him. He was learned, for he had been taught in good schools. “Oxford,” he told her when she asked, “and my father and grandfather before me.” There was so much delicacy in this man, so much troubled reasoning and so much blindness that sometimes thinking of him in the night she sighed.

“It would be easier for those who live under their yoke,” she thought, “if they were all evil.”

But no, for every evil white man, she thought, there were a hundred who were only blind, and of the two the blindness was harder to bear. Thus, probing this one with her skillful questions as they walked along the road together, she heard him say, “We have a responsibility to this country.”

When he said the word responsibility, he lifted his head and looked over the greenness of Burma through which the road cleft like a silver sword.

“Why,” she asked, “why do you feel responsible for this country?”

“Because,” he said soberly, “it is part of the Empire.”

“But why the Empire?” she persisted. “Why not let these people have their own country to hold and to rule?”

“One cannot simply throw down a responsibility,” he said gravely. “One has to fulfill it.”

She saw from his honest troubled look that indeed he meant this well and that he felt the weight of duty upon him and upon his own people.

She looked over the green country, too. “It would be a better world for us all,” she said at last, “if you and your kind were not so good.”

He looked at her and stammered as he always stammered when she was too quick for him. “Wh — what’s the meaning of that?”

“We could be free if you did not think it your duty to save us,” she said, her eyes sad and laughing together. “Your duty keeps you master and makes us slave. We cannot escape your goodness. Your honesty will not let us go. One of these days we shall defy your God and then we shall be free.”

“You sound mad,” he said astonished. “Do you know what you are talking about?”

“Not quite,” she said, “not quite, for I’m not talking out of my head but out of my heart. But I feel you such a weight here.” She put her hand on her bosom. “Yes, even just being with you, I feel is a weight on me.”

“I’m sorry for that,” he said, very grave. “I really like you enormously—”

“Which surprises you for you never thought you could like a Chinese,” she said.

He flushed heartily. “I would never have said that,” he said. “It’s simply that one doesn’t expect a Chinese — to—”

“Be wholly human,” she finished.

Now as they had talked they came near to a large town and he being absorbed in what they were saying and she in her thoughts that were as large as the world, they entered the town too carelessly, without seeing what the people were, whether friendly or not. So a young yellow-robed priest saw them first, and he ran secretly to his fellows to tell them that Englishmen had come into the town with women who were Chinese and the most evil thoughts came running up from his words like little flames from coals dropped in dried grass, until in less than an hour, while they sat down at a wayside table to eat and drink, the whole town had turned against them and they did not know it. They sat there on wooden benches in the main street, eating rice and curried vegetables which they had bought, and drinking tea. One moment was all peace and the hot sun shining down over the cloth that was spread above them for shade and the next moment they looked into sullen furious faces gathering around them.

“Why — what the devil?” the Englishman muttered. He leaped to his feet with his gun, and so did the other two men, but Mayli put her hand on his arm and turned the bayonet point down. “You and your guns,” she murmured, “always a gun for the cure to any trouble! Wait, you fool, and let us see what is the matter.”

She searched that crowd for any face that looked Chinese, for often in a town as large as this there was a Chinese merchant, but there was none here. Her heart beat hard once or twice as she thought what she could do in this evil circumstance. Then she said to the Englishman, smiling as she did so into the faces of the mob. “Put down your gun — tell the others to put theirs down. Sit down all of you and go on eating—” This she murmured and unwillingly the men obeyed. Then she held out her hands to the people and showed them empty and bare. She took up a gun, shook her head and put it down. She pointed up the roadway, and signified that they were going on. She took out money and paid the innkeeper for the food. Then she motioned to the others who sat there trying to eat. “Come,” she said, “show no fear. Let us go together as though nothing were wrong.”

Whether it was her calm, whether it was her voice speaking a language which they did not know, whether it was, after all, the three guns which the men had, the people allowed them to pass but they closed in behind them and pressed close while they walked.

Now while this was happening Sheng and his men and the Englishman with them had entered the town from the other side, and they too were coming up this street and they saw this great crowd and halted.

“Is this the enemy?” Sheng asked Charlie, for the crowd was very great and all along the street others were running to join it.

“Let us turn back and go around a side street,” Charlie said, “and come out of the town in a roundabout way and so avoid whatever it is.”

This they did, and a few minutes striding along they were nearer the gate than the others were and they went through and were on the other side. At that very moment they heard a voice shouting in English, “Let’s run for it!”

“I’ll be damned,” that Englishman with Sheng now said when he heard this voice, and he stood still and they all stood still and stared behind them. In a moment they saw the three Englishmen holding the hands of women and running toward them and behind them came a shouting yelling mob, now full of desire for attack. Sheng and those with him stood ready across the middle of the road and they fired their guns full over the heads of those fleeing and over the crowd. At the sound of these guns the Englishmen turned and dropping the hands of the women they too fired over the heads of the crowd, and at this fire the crowd stopped. Not one had a gun and how could they withstand such weapons?

Had they been a hardier people they might have plunged on. But those people were only mischievous and impetuous as children are and they were not hardy and rather than risk death they let these go on and they turned and went back into their town, laughing and full of good spirits as though they had won a victory.

It was only now that Sheng and Mayli had time to see each other, and for one full instant each stood staring at the other and then Mayli forgetting shame ran forward toward him and Pansiao was just behind her.

“Sheng!” she cried, “it is you! And your arm — is it healed?”

“Brother!” Pansiao screamed. “Brother, how did you come here?”

But Sheng, as soon as he saw Mayli and saw the company she was in, was thrown into a turmoil of jealousy. Who were these white men with whom Mayli traveled? And he remembered with sharp pain how easily she talked with white people and how near she was to such foreigners, and he felt the old wall of difference between him and Mayli. He stood still and looked very cold and he put on a false smile and he said, “Are we met again? I see you are with friends. As for my arm, it is healed enough to fight with.”

At this Mayli stopped, too. Here was such folly as she could not imagine. She stamped her foot in the dust of the rough road and she shouted at Sheng, “What do you mean, you Sheng? What are you thinking? How can you speak to me so?”

But Pansiao went up to him and put her hand on his arm and said, “Brother, now that you are here, we can leave these strangers.”

“I am not sure you wish to leave them,” Sheng said with his great eyes full of anger still on Mayli.

Now Mayli was very hot and weary, how weary she did not know until the anger of the mob was over, and suddenly she felt weary enough to lie down in the road where she stood and die. Her lips began to tremble and it was Charlie who saw it and he said to Sheng,

“Elder Brother, ought you to be angry when we are just escaped so great a danger?” And as he spoke his eyes went sidewise at Pansiao and she looked sidewise at him, although out of politeness neither spoke to the other. When he had overcome his politeness enough he said to her, “Are you well?” And she said, “Yes,” and with these few words each felt much was said.

All this time the Englishmen had looked on, much astonished and understanding not one word. That one Englishman who was with Sheng was silent from doubt of himself because he had run away from his army and so he stood behind Sheng and Charlie. But now the tall Englishman saw him clearly and he called out to him and went toward him with his hand outstretched as white men do when they see each other.

“I say, you’re English,” he said.

That other one put out his hand and smiled eagerly, “Rather,” he said and stopped there.

“How did you happen to meet up with these Chinamen?” the first one asked.

“Quite by accident,” the other one said.

“So did we with these women,” the tall one said. “We were taken prisoner by the Japs but we got away. There were eight of us — the rest weren’t so lucky.”

“I say,” the other one answered, then he went on carefully, “I got lost myself. The retreat was frightful, wasn’t it?”

“Frightful,” the tall one agreed.

Then those Englishmen all came together, shaking hands and murmuring to each other in low voices, and in a moment the two kinds stood separate again, English and Chinese, and all were full of unease, except for Mayli, and she looked first at these and then at those. It was a strange moment, a moment such as does sometimes fall whole and separate out of flowing time, entire in itself, linked neither to past or future. They endured it in uncertain silence. Around them was the brilliant green of this country which was foreign to them all. There were the low hills and under their feet was the dusty road. The sky above their heads was smooth and blue but in the west thunderheads piled themselves slowly higher and more high on the horizon. There was no one in sight in field or on the road, and the air was silent and hot about them. They were for this round separate moment cut off from the whole world, alone and yet apart. The Englishmen stood together, bearded and filthy and in diffident unease. The Chinese stood together in their faded and torn uniforms, barefoot, bareheaded, their faces brown with the sun, their eyes cool, and behind them was the Indian but none heeded him. Mayli stood between them all. Now she looked at the tall Englishman, now she looked at Sheng. Then she spoke to Sheng.

“Shall we go on?” she asked him.

“Go on with them?” he demanded. He drew down his black brows and thrust out his chin at the Englishmen. “No,” he said, “I have had enough.”

“What then?” she asked. “Where shall we go?”

“Where do they go?” he asked still scowling.

She turned to the Englishmen and changed her tongue. “Where do you go?” she asked.

The Englishmen murmured together. She heard the fragments of their words. “We’d better clear out—” “Anywhere back to white men—” “Out of this foul country—”

These were the words Mayli could hear. Then the tall one straightened himself. “Westward,” he said, “to India.”

They turned their eyes westward and there were the thunderheads slowly rising. They were silver-edged against the sun, but on the horizon land they massed black.

“There will be a storm,” she said.

“I daresay,” the Englishman said, “but it won’t be the first we’ve had.”

They hesitated a moment longer. Then the Englishman put his hand into his pocket and took out the compass she had let him carry through the jungle.

“I say, here’s your compass — thanks awfully,” he said.

She was moved for a moment to tell him to keep it. For indeed those Englishmen looked very helpless, standing there closely together. Could they find their way, unguided? But Chung had given her the compass and she did not wish to give it away forever, and so she took it in silence. Then the Englishman shouldered his gun. His face was pale and tired but his eyes were still resolute. “Well,” he said abruptly, “we’d better be moving on.”

He turned sharply as he spoke and strode off and behind him the other Englishmen in their dirty sweat-streaked uniforms fell in smartly and so they marched away down the road. Down the road they marched toward India and the Chinese stood watching while the brave and tattered figures grew small against the thunderous sky and then were lost in the rising darkness.

But here was the strangest instant of this strange moment. That man from India who all through these days had followed silently and faithfully behind Sheng now gathered his thin black body together and he leaped into the air as though his legs were springs of steel and he darted out and made after the Englishmen. This he did without a sound, with no cry or word of farewell. No, he only ran into the darkness after the white men, his bare feet silent as a tiger’s in the dust.

They saw his wild face for one instant, the whites of his great sad eyes, the flash of his white teeth. Then he, too, was gone.

All were too amazed at first to speak, until Sheng said, looking at Charlie, “That man of India — has he still his knife?”

And Charlie said, “You know he lives with it in his hand and he sleeps with it under his pillow.”

“Then the outlook is not good,” Sheng said grimly.

Now as the Chinese stood, a deep stealing wind began to come out of the clouds. It rose steadily with a distant roar and hearing it Mayli was troubled and for the first time she was afraid. She turned to Sheng, “Where shall we go?” she asked. “I am afraid of that storm. It does not look as usual as other storms.”

“It is a huge storm of some sort,” he replied. In anxiety he examined the clouds curling and boiling over the whole western sky. “Certainly we must escape it,” he said soberly.

Now they looked toward the east and they saw the sky there was still clear and blue.

“Let us go home,” Sheng said suddenly.

And Pansiao hearing this word, “home,” cried out, “Oh, I want to go home.”

“Home — home,” the weary women sighed.

But Mayli said sadly, “Between us and home there are hundreds of miles of jungles and mountains and rivers. Can we go so far on foot?”

“I go,” Sheng said sturdily.

He set off at once and Pansiao ran after him and Charlie went after her and one by one the women followed until only Mayli still stood, so weary, she told herself, that she could not put out her foot to take up so long a march. Ahead of them the pure bright sky shone still more clear. But was she not too weary to walk toward it? She longed to sleep until she died.

Ahead of her Sheng stopped and looked back. “Do you come with me?” he shouted.

Yet she hesitated. What if they never reached home?

“Sheng!” she cried. “Will you promise me—”

He cut across her pleading voice with harsh and whiplike words. “I make no promises,” he shouted. “I am not one of those men who make promises!”

She saw him standing tall and straight in the livid light. If she stayed here, if she ran after those Englishmen, would not the storm overtake her? The sunlight still fell upon the land from the clear sky ahead. What could she do except go with Sheng? And promises were nothing but words, and words were bubbles of air, falling easily from men’s lips and broken and gone as though they had never been. She bent her head. No, even though he would not promise—

“I am coming,” she said, and so they began the march home.

… Far away in Ling Tan’s house Jade sat watching her sons play on the threshing floor in front of the door. It was near noon and in a little while the two men, Lao Ta and Lao Er, would come home to their noon meal. They were in the fields, cutting the ripe wheat. It was a heavy harvest and they had twice thinned it secretly, as all the farmers had done in that region under the enemy, so that the enemy inspectors, searching the fields, could not see how good a harvest it was. The secret grain they had threshed by night and it was hidden in the bins in the cave under the kitchen.

Now Jade was sewing on a garment of Lao Er’s and despising the stuff of which it was made as she stitched. The cotton stuffs were all worthless now, for this was all the enemy brought them. Some day, she mused, she would weave once more the old fine strong blue cloth that lasted from father to son, some day when they were free again. Yes, they would be free again, she knew it, she felt it. There was no promise for eye to see nor for ear to hear, and yet men and women, in the midst of present evil, had begun to hope out of their own unyielding hearts. Out of such musing she lifted her head from her sewing and saw the two men coming across the fields, their sickles in their hands. They walked side by side, sturdy and strong.

She rose to go into the house and put the meal on the table. Then she stopped for she heard an uproar from her twin sons. They were quarreling, the larger one against the smaller. Now these two were not of one size, the last born was the smaller, and she was about to defend that smaller one against the larger, for he was bawling and weeping and hard pressed. Then she did not. She only stood watching the two while this weeping and roaring went on, waiting to see how they fought this battle.

Suddenly she saw that small fellow stop weeping and she saw his face set itself in fury and he flew at the bigger one with all his strength, his anger bitter in his face and strong in his arm. And she laughed.

“Good, my son!” she called. “Fight for yourself — fight, fight!”

And she went into the house, content.