The Promise

V

NOW THESE ONES ABOVE were no strangers to Mayli. She had heard her father talk much of them. The lady was once her mother’s friend, and the One Above was himself her father’s friend, and the one, moreover, to whom her father looked for direction and command.

Therefore Mayli prepared herself for the meeting, not only in her looks and garments but in what she would say. The meeting was granted easily enough. Mayli sent a message and a message was returned. It was written in English by the lady herself, and it said, “Come and breakfast with us tomorrow.”

So the next morning Mayli, having slept heartily in her hotel after the day’s ride through the sky, put on her favorite gown of apple green and bound back her long black hair in its smooth knot and she added scarlet to her lips and a touch of black to the ends of her eyebrows and she hung plain gold rings in her ears. Then, going out of the hotel, she sat herself in a riksha which was waiting at the door.

“I go to the Chairman’s house,” she said, for the One Above was commonly called the Chairman, and all knew him by that name.

Without any astonishment, the riksha puller said, “The price is half a silver dollar to the ferry,” and when Mayli nodded, he tightened the girdle of cloth about his middle and set off at the smooth running pace to which his brown legs were used.

The streets leading to the river were lines of ruin, and there was scarcely a whole house to be seen anywhere, so heavy had the summer’s bombing been in this city of Chungking, but nobody seemed to see it. Indeed the war had gone on so long that there were now children able to talk and to run about and even to work at small matters to help their parents who had never seen a roof whole over their heads, and who looked on bombings as on thunderstorms and hurricanes, and no more unnatural. On these streets the people went about their business of buying and selling, and in some places houses were even being mended while business went on inside them, and children ran and played and fell under the feet of carriers and riksha runners, so that pleasant curses and laughter and the shouts of people at their everyday life filled the air, even so early. There was liveliness everywhere and no sign of fear or sadness, and Mayli found herself smiling out of simple satisfaction that she was alive too and here and on her way to have breakfast with the Ones Above. And as she liked to do, being so full of life herself, she fell into talk with the person nearest, who was the riksha puller.

“Are you one of those who have come up from under the feet?” the riksha puller asked in politeness.

Now Mayli knew that that this was the manner in which the people of this city asked whether one were a citizen here or not, and so she said, “I come from far away indeed.” He was willing to talk as all his kind are and willingly told her that the times were good for men like him.

“I had rather pull a riksha than be a scholar in these days,” he said laughing. “The truth is that so would scholars. Why, I know a learned man who has papers even from foreign schools, and yet he is pulling a riksha because he earns more so than he did being an official. Yes, in times like this a pair of good legs are worth more than a headful of brains and a bellyful of learning.”

And he went on and told her that his family had escaped without death through two summers of bombings, and that even the smallest child learned last summer to toddle toward the cave in the rocks when the signal went up for the enemy in the skies, and so that his wife would not have to walk so far with the children when he was busy with his trade he had built his hut near the mouth of the cave, and they were very comfortable there.

“Still, it is not a good life,” Mayli said, “and there must come an end to it.”

“There comes an end to all things,” the man said cheerfully, “and our care should be only to be alive when it comes.”

So saying, he drew up before the river, and Mayli paid him his fare, and something more, and then she stepped upon the ferry boat that was waiting for last passengers.

The boat left the shore as soon as she came, for the ferry man was awed by her looks and good garments, and as he rowed across the river, she stood and looked at the scarred city on the shore. It was like a battered brave creature, a dragon who has fought and been wounded and still holds up his head. The light on the muddy river made the water look pearly clear and the city still more dark and scarred.

The ferry had a few early passengers, and they all stared at Mayli, but she did not speak. On the other side of the river she found a car waiting which the Ones Above had sent to meet her, and the driver was a young soldier who saluted her and drove away over the rough road so quickly that the car shook and squeaked in every joint. When this was ended, she came down again and found a sedan chair, waiting for her to take her up a hill, and so by many vehicles she came near to a plain brick house, and surely it was no palace, and yet here was where the Chairman and his lady lived. A guard or two stood at the gate but they knew of her coming, and let her pass, and she walked across a small garden space and to the house. And in the house a serving man took her into a plain room, furnished half with Chinese goods and half with foreign, and in it nothing was rich or costly, and she sat down and waited.

She had not long to wait, for in a moment or two she heard footsteps soft and quick, and there was the lady herself, very fresh and pretty with the morning. She put out both her hands to Mayli and Mayli felt those strong hands, small and slender and firm, and holding so much within them.

“So you are your mother’s daughter!” the lady cried. “Let me look at you. Yes, you look like her, the same big eyes and the fortunate nose. I remember your mother was very beautiful.” She sat down on the long foreign couch, all her movements quick and full of grace, and she pulled Mayli down with her.

For the first time in her life Mayli was shy and speechless, to her own dismay. Never before had she been so that words would not roll to the end of her tongue, but now she sat and only stared at the lady. The lady was dressed simply but very richly in a dark blue silk, the sleeves cut short. But over the robe she wore a little jacket of velvet of the same color, and this dark hue set off her clear skin and red lips. This was a very handsome face. The features were each handsome enough, but what made it most remarkable was the proud intelligence in the eyes, and the changefulness of the mouth and the fearlessness of the head carried high upon the slender and most graceful body. She was not a young woman, this lady, but she looked imperishably young. Of her temper Mayli had heard many stories, and now she could believe them, for there was too much power and passion here to mean an easy temper.

“And tell me about your father,” the lady said smiling. “The Chairman thinks very highly of him, you know. Yes, it is true he listens sometimes to your father’s advice, and then I grow jealous.” She burst into clear laughter as she said this. “He will not always listen to me,” she said, twisting her lovely mouth into pretended pouting. “Oh, what a disadvantage it is today to be a woman! Do you not feel it so?”

She put the question and looked so beautiful that Mayli was compelled to laughter, too. “I cannot think of any disadvantage it is to you to be a woman,” she said.

“Oh, but it is,” the lady said quickly. “You cannot imagine. I long to do this and that — anything and everything — I see so much to do, and then sooner or later it comes. The Chairman says, ‘Remember that you are a woman, please.’ ”

She laughed again, willful, charming, impetuous laughter, and for the first time in her life Mayli had no wish to talk but only to listen and watch the laughter and the earnestness play like light and shadow over this most lovely face.

Then suddenly the lady fell silent. They heard a footstep at the door. The lady rose. “It is he,” she said. Mayli rose, too, and so they were standing when the door opened and into the room came the Chairman himself, with no guard or servant to announce him.

He was a slender figure, seeming taller than he was. He had the carriage of a soldier and such a face as Mayli had never seen before. First she saw the eyes. They shot their beams direct upon her and she felt him looking at her so clearly that it seemed she felt two shining dark blades pass through her brain. And yet she did not feel he saw her at all, but only what she was thinking. That she was young or a woman or beautiful meant nothing. What she was thinking meant everything.

“This is Mr. Wei’s daughter, Mayli.” The lady said to him. “Do you remember I have told you about her mother?”

The Chairman came forward. “I do remember,” he said. Now his face was kind, and he took her hand. His hand was hard and thin and strong, sinewy like his face and body. But it seemed steel and not a man’s hand and she felt her own soft warm flesh against that touch of steel. Even his voice was not like a man’s voice. It had a high thin quality, steely too, and it sounded as though it came from far away in the man. He turned to the lady.

“We must breakfast,” he said. “The generals are waiting for their orders. They must return at once to their posts.”

He led the way and the lady followed, taking Mayli’s hand again. How different were the hands of these two, the woman’s so warm and soft and enclosing, and the man’s so thin and hard, and yet both so strong!

They sat down to a small table and food was brought, half foreign, half Chinese. The lady ate bread and coffee and egg, and the man ate rice and salted foods. There was this division between the two. The man was of his own time and his own country and people, and the woman was herself, a creature speaking now in one language and then another, as easily in English as in Chinese, and thinking now on one side of the world and now on the other. Her thoughts flew from country to country and she seemed made of them all. But the man was Chinese, and he spoke only Chinese and sometimes when she spoke too long in English, he fell into deep silence, as though he had forgotten her. Then quickly the woman, always seeing him and everything he did and how he looked, began to speak in Chinese again, and if he did not answer she would recall him by a touch, or a question.

He spoke very little and she spoke very much. She pressed Mayli with many questions, and then did not listen for the answers. And yet she seemed to pluck answers out of the air. From two or three words she comprehended all.

“Did the Americans think the enemy would attack them?” she asked, and then when Mayli began to answer she answered her swiftly. “Of course the Americans never think anything at all. They are so busy.” She frowned and bit a crust of bread with her white teeth. “I need money for my war orphans. I have not enough. And it is absurd that we have not more planes. I tell the Chairman—”

He looked up, his face mild for the moment and kind. “The planes have been promised us,” he said.

She made a pretty face of laughter at him. “Oh, you who always believe!”

“I believe our allies,” he said.

“Those who ask receive,” she retorted. “Does it not say so in the Bible?”

“We have asked,” he said.

“There are many ways of asking,” she answered him, “and we have only asked as gentlemen ask — with our words. Others are not so gentlemanly and they receive when we do not.”

This it seemed was an old argument between them, for stubbornness settled between the man’s brows. And stubbornness hardened the woman’s beautiful mouth. Silence came down upon them both. And yet in spite of the quarrel and stubbornness and silence none could sit in this room with them and not know that the woman’s uneasy world lay in the man, but that the man’s heart was not wholly in the woman. Half hatred, half love, something flashed between them like lightning. In Mayli the thought of Sheng quickened. The Chairman, too, had once been a nameless young man, the son of a plain good family among the people such as Ling Tan’s was. He was not learned to this day nor had he risen by any power except his own. When he wed this woman there had been great wonder everywhere, Mayli had heard her father say, for the lady was the daughter of rich people, educated in many schools. Nor had he yielded to her imperiousness. There were stories all over the land of the quarrels of these two. This proud woman had married him as her equal and she would be equal to him, and yet time and again he made her take the place of a woman. There was the time when the governing council met, at which no women were allowed, and she would go, but guards had stopped her at the door, though she was his wife.

She had demanded of them, “By whose orders do you forbid me?”

They had answered, “By our Chairman’s orders,” and so she had yielded, though with anger. Who could know how furiously she had reproached the man? Of these things neither spoke.

And there had been the story of how once her anger overcame her and to revenge herself she wrote a letter to the one who had once loved her as his rival, and he came upon her as she wrote and she was afraid and hid the letter. When he commanded her to let him see what she wrote, she refused and then he cried in a terrible voice,

“I do not command you as your husband but as the head of this nation!” and he drew out his sword. Then she held out the letter to him and he read it and threw it back on the table.

“I do not care what you write to that fellow,” he had said, all his anger turned to ice, “but I do care that you refuse to obey me when I speak.”

Time and again, the stories said, when she was too proud to yield to him, she went away and left him and stayed away. There were those who were glad to see her go, because of her power over him. But though his anger could last for many days, and so could hers, the day always came and they knew it must come, that whether the quarrel were healed or not, he would send for her or she would come without his sending and their love and hatred would go on.

For the woman had this hold upon the man, that she held him by body and mind and soul, too, and he had never seen another human being who could hold him by all three. She was beautiful and she was learned and clever and full of guile and wisdom and she knew the world as he could never know it and she had words on her tongue to suit every need. And yet she divined in him his soul, that would not be satisfied unless it, too, were fed. He needed to believe that what he did was great and right because it was also good, and he was one who by his nature was compelled to believe that the self in him must be in the path of Tao. This need she satisfied in him. She could pray with him when he needed to pray, and where else was there a woman like her in the world who could satisfy a man both saint and soldier?

Mayli watched them and felt their power and their attraction that somehow drew her into the circle while it excluded her, for the man and the woman lived alone together wherever they were, and yet all the world drew around them.

And all this was shown in the lightest laughter and the gayest words, in the gravest declaration. Thus the lady told of some small thing a child had said in one of her orphanages. Yesterday a little boy had said, “Must I read, lady?”

“Yes, you must read, because all children must learn to read,” she said.

“But I have no time to read,” he had told her distressfully. “I have to fight the enemy. Please teach me first to shoot a gun, lady.”

And after laughter the lady said gravely,

“They shall all be taught to shoot and read. In this world we have suffered because we have only learned to read and not to shoot.” And then she said yet more gravely: “Some might have led the way in this war to a new world where we could trust them, but now we cannot trust them. They break their promise to us over and over again.”

But the Chairman would not have this return to their quarrel. He rose, having finished his meal, and he took his teabowl in his hand for a last drink of the hot tea before he went away. “I shall not believe that yet,” he said to her. “And because I will still believe in my allies, I am sending my best divisions to Burma. If we can fight side by side and win the campaign and keep the Great Road open, then I shall know you are wrong.”

He nodded his head quickly to Mayli and went away, and so at the table the two women were left alone. For a moment there was silence, as though when he went away energy went with him out of the woman. She sat with her round bare elbow on the table, her long eyes downcast, her mind gone with him. When she lifted her eyes, Mayli saw fear in them.

“I am afraid,” she said, “I am very afraid.”

“Why, lady?” Mayli asked.

“I am afraid of this campaign,” she said. “He is sending our very best, our most highly trained, our seasoned fighters, the ones he ought to keep for our own country I tell him. What if the enemy advances upon us while these divisions are in Burma? He values them so much that it is like sending his sons away from him. And yet he says he must send his best.”

She was speaking in English, as she did when he was not there. “I dread the effect upon him,” she said, “if the campaign should not go well.”

“Why should it not go well?” Mayli asked.

The lady shook her head. Her beautiful face was very sad now. “There are reasons,” she said. “There are reasons. I wish I were a man and could lead the divisions myself, I would see that those reasons would not prevail.” She sighed a great sigh. “I wish that I could know from day to day what happens, so that when the campaign is won — or lost — we might know the truth and be misled no more.”

Mayli’s heart leaped. “Send me,” she said, “in your place. I will go and I will watch and I will tell you faithfully all I see and all that happens.”

The lady lifted her head and fixed her beautiful powerful eyes upon Mayli’s face. “It is too dangerous,” she said. “I must think of your father and your mother.” But she did not move her eyes from Mayli’s face.

“You know that fathers and mothers matter nothing,” Mayli said quietly. “You know that only one thing matters today — that each does his duty. If women can fight in the army beside men, if women can walk thousands of miles beside men, I also can do these things.”

“Yes,” the lady said, “you can. For if I were you, I could. But what will you be? There are no women in these divisions. Do you know medicine?”

“No,” Mayli said. “But I could take care of those who do. Let me be the one who takes care of the women nurses. I will see to their food and their shelter and that what they need is given them and I will stay with them at night and see to their protection in the strange country.”

“Yes,” the lady said again slowly. “You could do that.”

“And wherever I am,” Mayli said quickly, “I will watch everything and tell you all. I will be your eyes and your ears.”

“Yes,” the lady said again, “you could be my eyes and my ears.”

She sat reflecting upon this for moments without speech, and the sunlight coming through the window caught the clear green jade in her ring and made it gleam. It was a fabulous piece of jade and if it had been sold it could have fed all her orphans for many days, and yet it was part of this woman and not to be sold. For here was the woman’s strength, that beauty belonged to her. Any who knew her would have cried out at the selling of any part of her beauty, for there is a beauty more necessary even than the life of another creature. And Mayli seeing such beauty felt her own devotion well up in her like loyalty to heaven itself.

The lady lifted her eyes as though she caught this warmth upon her own heart and she said. “I can trust you and you shall go. Now leave me and I will prepare your way.”