The Promise

VI

MAYLI DID NOT SEE the two again. She returned to her hotel and, after waiting a day, she received a note written her by the lady, in which she said: “That which we planned is done. You will return to Kunming by a plane ready tonight. I hope your mother looks down and approves.”

Mayli did not go out from her room all that day, but she slept and woke to eat and slept again. When at last near midnight she stood at a certain spot beside a small lonely plane she felt refreshed and ready for whatever was ahead of her.

Inside the plane there was one other passenger. He was an officer in a uniform she did not know, a young man with a large, plain face. He spoke to her and used her name, and she knew therefore that he had been told who she was. But he did not speak again. He wrapped himself in his cape and in silence the return was made.

When she entered her little house the next day she found nothing but stillness and peace. It was so quiet a spot after the speed of her journey, after the excitement of her visit, that she could scarcely believe it was there. In the court the bamboos were motionless and the little pool was clear and still under the blue sky of the fair day. And yet scarcely had she come near her door when the little dog heard her and began to bark wildly with joy that she had come back. In a moment Liu Ma came out of the kitchen, her rice bowl in her hand. She was eating, and she had not thought to see her young mistress.

“You are come,” she cried, and put down her bowl and made haste to fetch tea and food. Soon the place was quiet no more, between the dog and Liu Ma and Mayli herself, who, being full of health and pleasure, could not keep from singing and calling out to Liu Ma. She made no secret to the old woman of her wish to know whether Sheng had come while she was gone.

“Did the Big Soldier plague you while I was gone?” she shouted to Liu Ma in the kitchen.

And Liu Ma shouted back, “Did he not? I am sorry for you, young mistress!”

“Why?” Mayli asked. She had put her porcelain basin of hot water at the window and there she stood washing herself, the steam coming off her lovely skin, and her lips red.

“He is roaring like a tiger,” Liu Ma shouted back. “He bellowed north and south, east and west, because he did not know where you were.”

“And you could tell him nothing!” Mayli cried gaily.

“Nothing, nothing!” the old woman cackled, coughing in the smoke behind the stove. Now that her young mistress was back she felt excited and alive again, and she made haste and dropped this and that and broke an egg on the floor and called in the dog to lap it up and tried to do everything at once.

As for Mayli she had never felt so filled with joy in all her being. Not so long as she lived would she forget the Ones Above and especially the lady whose eyes and ears she was to be. Nothing she could have been given to do could please her more than this, and she knew she could do it well, and she trusted in herself. She sat eating heartily of rice and egg and fish and tearing a strip of brown baked sesame bread apart with her hands, biting the tiny sesame seeds with her white sharp teeth, and throwing bits to the dog, and all the time her mind leaped across the miles of land and the mountains, to the battlefield.

“Surely we will succeed,” she dreamed, “and the enemy will be stopped by our men and before all nations it will be seen that we are brave and we stopped them. When our allies see our success they will honor us for it and redeem their promises.”

So her great thoughts went on, leaping from crag to crag of the mountains and making the hardships of the battlefield easy and the armies victorious, and in those armies would not Sheng be the bravest and the best of all the young leaders? She and Sheng together, could not they be two like the Ones Above some day? Then since she was not a dreamer by nature, she laughed at herself and pulled the dog’s ears.

“You will be ill if you eat any more bread, you mouse,” she said, and she rose and paced about the court restlessly and thought whether or not she would tell Sheng that she was going or whether she would let him find out for himself. This she could not decide for nearly an hour. There would be pleasure in telling him, for how could he forbid what the lady had commanded? And yet she was a mischievous creature and she could not forbear the thought of her laughter when he saw her the first time on the march with him. The nurses would be taken in trucks as far as these vehicles could go, doubtless, and she imagined herself riding past him, and she imagined his face when he saw her. This so tempted her that she decided that she would not tell him. No, and she would not tell him even that she was come home.

Then she remembered the General. She knew he had come back before her, for the Chairman had said he was sending the generals quickly to prepare for battle. Would he not tell Sheng immediately when he saw her name upon the lists? Then she must go quickly to his headquarters herself and beg him to keep her secret.

This no sooner came to her mind than she did it. She combed her hair freshly and thrust red berries into the coil, and put on her red wool gown and her long black cape, and smoothed perfume into her cheeks and palms, and was ready to go.

“Where are you going now?” Liu Ma shouted to her through the kitchen window.

“I have business,” Mayli replied, “and if that big soldier comes while I am gone, you are not to tell him I am here.”

This comforted Liu Ma, who did not put it at all beyond her mistress’s mischief that she would go to visit a man in his own rooms. Liu Ma often said aloud that once a woman steps over a broken wall she makes a road over it, and by this she meant that walls ought to be about women or they go anywhere and do anything without heed to decency.

So Mayli took a riksha and went to the General’s headquarters, and she thought, “It will be my usual evil that Sheng is there, too,” but no, he was not. When she gave her name to the guard at the gate, he took it in and the General who had come back the day before her ordered that she was to be brought in. He was alone, and he welcomed the thought of her company. Although he was a man who would never have looked at any woman except his wife with thoughts of intimacy, yet he relished a chance to talk to pretty young women, knowing his own inner safety.

So now he laid aside the paper plans he was studying and straightened his collar and looked at himself in the open window which was good as a mirror and smoothed his hair and rose when he heard her footsteps. She came in swiftly, not knowing she unconsciously imitated the lady in the way she walked and moved and in her warm quick smile.

He bowed when he saw her but she put out her hand in the foreign gesture which was natural to her. He hesitated and then put out his own hand and touched hers quickly. She laughed at his cool touch.

“I forgot that to shake hands is not natural to us,” she said frankly. “I have been too long away from home.”

“Sit down,” he said and himself sat down.

The smell of her perfume was in his nostrils and he breathed it in deeply. His wife was a good woman and he loved her and she had borne him two sons, but his parents had chosen her and he never forgot that this was so. Now with vague longing he looked at the fresh beautiful face. She had sat down and thrown back her cape and she leaned her arms on the desk, and looked at him frankly. He was made shy by that frank gaze and yet he enjoyed it. “These new women,” he thought, “though perhaps troublesome to a man, yet have their charm.” He had no wish to marry one of them. A man did not want so much charm in a wife. But still it was pleasant to look at one like this so long as he had no responsibility for what she did or said.

“I come always to ask you to help me,” Mayli said coaxingly. She never coaxed Sheng. With Sheng she was ruthless and teasing and she spoke out her mind, but her instinct taught her that she must not let this General think she knew herself his equal.

“I am always glad to help you,” the General said smiling.

“Have you seen the lists of those nurses who are to accompany the three divisions to Burma?” she asked.

“I have not,” the General replied. “I have been too busy with other parts of the campaign.”

“Then I am in time,” she said. She leaned forward a little more closely. “You know that I went to see the Ones Above,” she said in a low voice. “Did they speak of me to you?”

“I did not see the lady,” he said, “and with the Chairman I spoke only of military affairs.”

“The lady has appointed me to go as the one in charge of the young nurses,” Mayli said.

The General smiled. “The lady does what she likes,” he said. “But are you not young to be put in such a place?”

Mayli smiled a most mischievous smile. “I am young, but very strong,” she said. “I can walk for miles, I can endure heat and I can eat whatever there is to eat.”

“A good soldier,” he said. “Well, what else? Your work is not under my direct command, you know. You must report to another.”

He began to search through the papers and he found one and read out the name, “Pao Chen is your superior.”

She put the name into her mind securely. “Pao Chen,” she repeated. “But that is not why I come to you.”

He leaned back and looked at her, still smiling. “When will you tell me why you have come?” he asked. “Look at these papers on my desk. Each one must be made into an act. And how few days we have left! There has already been too much delay.”

“I will speak quickly,” she said. “It is a thing short and yet difficult for me to say. It is this — please tell no one that I am going.”

Now that she came to her request she found it impossible to speak Sheng’s name. She blushed brightly and winked her long lashed eyes as he looked at her.

“Why should your name be kept so secret?” he asked astonished.

She saw he had no knowledge of the reason, so she said bravely, “The young commander — the one you have newly promoted — of whom I spoke—”

“Ling Sheng,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, “it is he — I do not wish him to know that I go.”

“Ah,” he said.

“He has some silly thoughts of me,” she went on, her cheeks burning again, “and — and — it is better if we do not meet — that is, we have a grave duty to do and I do not wish to — to—”

“You have no silly thoughts of him?” The General’s smile was teasing.

“None, none,” Mayli said quickly. “I must do my work well, and I do not want him thinking his thoughts. He has his work and I have mine and I do not want to know what he thinks. Moreover, if he finds I am going he will come and try to prevent me.”

“He can scarcely do that if the lady has told you to go,” the General said.

“You do not know him,” Mayli said with earnestness. “He thinks he is the one who can say what I shall do and what I shall not do.”

“In other words he loves you,” the General said with mild laughter.

“But I do not wish to be loved,” Mayli said hotly. “This is not the time for such things.”

The General shook with silent laughter for a moment. Then he wiped his eyes. “You shall have your own way,” he said. “I have a campaign to undertake and I agree with you that it is better for him to know nothing about you. If he is wounded, he may discover your presence. If he is not, there is little reason why he should ever know you are with us.”

“That is what I wish,” Mayli said. Now that she had what she wanted she would not stay one moment longer, knowing that nothing makes a man sorrier that he has done a good deed to a woman than to have her linger on after he has done it, and this especially when he doubts himself wise to have yielded to her.

So she rose and leaned on her two hands on the desk, and smiled down at him. “How good you are — how kind,” she said. “And I promise you I will do all my duty and if there is any need you ever have of me, call upon me.”

He nodded at her, and felt warmth stirring in his belly as though he had drunk a draught of sweet hot wine.

Now just at this moment a soldier came in to say that the commanders of the divisions were waiting outside as the General had ordered them to be at this hour.

“Ah, yes,” the General said. “I had forgotten — let them come in.”

But Mayli put her hand to her lips at this. “No,” she whispered. “Let me go out first.”

Ah, yes,” the General said again. “I forgot — yes, he is one of them.” So he said to the soldier. “Well, tell them to wait a moment.”

The soldier went out, and after a minute to allow him time, Mayli said good-by and her thanks again and she went out, too. She was afraid that Sheng might be somewhere to see her, and she drew the collar of her cape high and bent her head and hurried her steps. But she did not see him anywhere and so she thought herself safe.

Now so she might have been safe, if the soldier had not been a dirty fellow who loved to joke about women and men, and so he went back sniggering and told the three commanders that they must wait a while because the General had a visitor whom they must not see.

They looked at each other and did not answer out of respect for their superior, but when the soldier was gone Sheng said plainly, “I did not think that he was such a one.”

“He is not,” the second commander said. “The minds of inferior men are always ready to make such accursed talk, especially about those who rule them.”

Now the room in which they waited was a small room off the main court. A hallway passed between the court and the room, but there was a door into the hallway and this was open, and toward it the third one now stepped.

“I see a woman, nevertheless,” he said unwillingly.

They all stepped to the door then, and they all saw the tall slender woman wrapped in a cape for one quick second, too quick to catch any of her looks. But Sheng knew the moment that he saw her who it was. Many women wore such capes, but he knew this tall woman, and for proof it chanced that his eye fell on her hand holding the collar of her cape about her and he saw on it the green gleam of jade.

Who can tell the rush of terror and fear and anger that now swept up his body? Was this where she was all these days, here in this house? Had she gone nowhere but here? Was his own general his rival with her?

The soldier was back again before he could think beyond his fears. “The General invites you,” the man said.

There was no more time. Sheng was compelled to move forward with his fellows and he marched beside them into the room where the General was. There the General sat, his cheeks flushed and his eyes bright. They stood at attention side by side, and saluted and at that moment Sheng smelled in his nostrils the faint sweetness of perfume left upon the air.

… “The Big Soldier did not come,” Liu Ma told Mayli as she came into the gate again.

“Ah, good,” Mayli said carelessly. She felt happy and yet restless, and when she had taken off her cape and changed her robe to a softer one, she still felt restless. She walked in and out and then in and out again of the little court. If he came she would tell him nothing. They would play and quarrel and fend off their love, and she would tell him good-by when he went away and then let what happened happen. She was restless with secret laughter and gaiety, and she teased her little dog and played pranks on Liu Ma until that old woman lost her temper outright.

“You are not a child,” the old woman scolded her, “I swear I wish you were though, so that I could beat your bottom. Heaven send you a husband soon, and I shall not care who he is. I have a mind to hunt for that Big Soldier myself and tell him he can have you for nothing and I shall only be glad to have some peace.”

“You would have no peace,” Mayli laughed. “You would have to come along to take care of me, and you know how we quarrel, he and I.”

“At least it would be he and I against you, you naughty demon,” the old woman said.

The truth was that now, slowly, the old woman had begun to grow fond of the tall young soldier, and she had today made up her mind that it would be better indeed if her young mistress married him, for who else but a soldier would marry so free and wild a thing? A decent man wanted a quiet and obedient woman, and would she ever be a good wife to any usual man? Liu Ma could not believe it. So she had made up her mind secretly that when Sheng came next time she would let him know that she had changed and that now she favored him. She waited for him with impatience, never doubting that he would come as he had come every day to ask if there were any word of Mayli.

He did not come. All that day he did not come, and the old woman grew anxious. “It cannot be that the Big Soldier has gone off to war somewhere?” she asked Mayli in the afternoon of the second day. “He has not stayed away so long as this before.”

“What do we care if he is gone or not?” Mayli asked, pulling her dog’s ears. “We do not care do we, little dog?”

“I am used to that long radish,” Liu Ma said unwillingly.

“You like radishes better than I do, then,” she said, still laughing.

But Mayli would not acknowledge even to herself that she, too, wondered why Sheng did not come.

From that day, Mayli spoke no more of Sheng. There was no time indeed, for early the next morning Mayli was summoned by messenger to come to her superior, Pao Chen, to receive her orders.

When that message came she deemed it time to tell Liu Ma what lay ahead, and so when she had eaten and when the old woman came in to fetch away the bowls to wash, she lit a cigarette and said,

“Liu Ma, I have something to tell you.”

“Tell on, then,” the old woman replied. She stood waiting with her hands folded under her apron upon her middle.

“I am going away,” Mayli said abruptly. “I have received a command from the Ones Above to do a certain work I cannot tell of, but I must do it.”

Liu Ma did not speak, but her jaw dropped and she stared at Mayli.

“What day I go is not yet known,” Mayli said, “but that messenger who came this morning brought me the order from my superior and there I must go and see what is wanted of me. As for you, you will stay here until I return and keep the dog and this house. If you are lonely you may find another woman to stay with you.”

Now Liu Ma was used enough to change in her long life and, hearing whence the commands came, she did not dream of crying out against that, but still she did not like what she heard and because she could not protest the larger she protested the smaller.

“Why should I want another woman here to be fed and spoken to and noticed all the time? I had rather stay alone with the dog whom I know.”

“You shall do as you like,” Mayli said with good humor. “All that I ask is that you keep the house for a home for me.”

“I do not know whether it is well even for me to do that,” the old woman said, wanting to feel peevish. “This is not my native earth and water and how shall I know whether you will come back or not? You may change your wish and here I shall be waiting for you until I die and die, perhaps, with nothing but a dog beside my bed.”

“Now you are being troublesome,” Mayli said laughing. “I say then that you are only to stay if you wish to stay and, when you go, lock the gates and take the dog or leave it, and in all things do only as you wish, good soul.”

Thus she took away all cause for discontent, and this made the old woman more peevish still. She clattered the bowls as she picked them up and she said, “Why is it you are being sent for a work? Even in a dream I could not guess.”

“You must ask the lady that,” Mayli said. “I too wonder why I am sent, but I am sent and so I must go.”

“She does not know you,” Liu Ma exclaimed. “A willful rootless man-woman sort of thing you are,” Liu Ma went on, “and what will you do — hold a gun and march beside that big soldier?”

Now this pricked Mayli very deep and so she grew angry and leaning over she slapped Liu Ma’s cheek. “Hold your jaws together,” she cried. “I do not even know whether I am being sent where he goes or not. How evil an old mind that always runs upon lust and lechery!”

Liu Ma drew herself still at this. “I am a decent woman,” she bawled, “and what my mind runs on is getting you wed and made decent, too, instead of running everywhere loose. The only decent woman is one wed to a man and behind walls and made the mother of his children.”

“You dream, old woman,” Mayli retorted. “Is this a time for marriage and having children and being locked behind walls?”

Now that she spoke so sternly Liu Ma was frightened and so she held her peace and went on about her work though she thrust out her lip in a most sulky fashion. And Mayli made ready to obey the summons she had been given, and her anger made her silent, too, and she felt righteously that she was not going westward because of Sheng but truly enough because she wanted to go for what use she could be.

So she went on foot to the place where she had been told to go, and when she reached the gate she saw other women going in, too, all young and strong and grave-faced. She joined them and went in with them to a large room where two men sat behind desks and took their names and sent them to the right and left to wait.

When her turn came she was not sent with the others but straight ahead through an open door and there she found the same man who had been the only other passenger in the plane with her a few days past. She wondered when she saw him that he had not spoken to her that day beyond the commonest greeting. But still it was so that he had not chosen to speak, and now she did not recall herself to him. She stood before him until he bade her sit down, and then she sat and waited while he looked at a paper before him. Then he put it down.

“You have been told your duties,” he said.

“I have been told only part of them,” she replied.

“Here is all your other responsibility written down,” he said, and he took the sheet of paper and handed it to her. “Read it,” he commanded, “and tell me what you do not understand.”

She read it carefully, and there was nothing she could not understand. Indeed all was written down and numbered. He waited motionless while she read.

“Is all clear?” he asked.

“It is clear,” she replied.

“It is your duty to see to each of these things,” he said, “and if any fails to be done I shall look to you. Your co-worker will be the head doctor, Chung Liang-mo. Together you two will be responsible for all that concerns the sick and the wounded and the nurses will work under both of you. In this he will be responsible for the medical and surgical matters, but you will be responsible for all that concerns the nurses, the food, the quarters, the supplies. Where you disagree, you will come to me and I will decide between you. I do not expect disagreement.”

She bowed her head in assent. He struck a bell on the table and a soldier came in.

“Invite Dr. Chung to come here,” he said.

He sat silent and without moving until in a few minutes another man entered the room. Now Mayli waited with some impatience for this man, for this was the one with whom she must work side by side, and if she disliked him from the beginning the work would be the more difficult. But the moment he came in she liked him. Chung Liang-mo was a man short and strong in the body, and his head was round and his face round and he had a patient mouth and patient good eyes, and yet intelligence was the light behind the eyes. He was neither shy nor bold. He greeted Pao Chen as though they were friends and sat down, and Pao Chen seemed to wake into new interest and he said,

“This is your co-worker, Wei Mayli, of whom you have been told. She has received her orders and you have received yours, and it would be well for you to draw apart and talk together awhile. Go into this next room while I proceed with what I have to do.”

Dr. Chung rose and smiled his easy smile and he said to Mayli,

“Shall we go apart?”

She rose, too, and followed him into the other room, and there he sat down and she also. Then he took out of his pocket a sheet like hers and gave it to her. “I will read yours and you mine,” he said, “so that we may know all our work.”

“Here is mine,” she said, and so they studied the sheets for a moment.

“This Pao Chen,” the doctor then said, “is a strange man. He will always write a thing down rather than speak it, but he has a head so clear and hard that his mistakes are very few. He is a man who had rather act than talk, and yet I do not know another better for his part of this campaign.” He looked at Mayli kindly, examining her face. “You are very young, I think,” he said. “Have you ever endured any hardships?”

“I have not,” she confessed, “but I am ready to endure them.”

“We shall have great hardships,” he said gently. “This campaign must be a difficult one. The Chairman has laid down a very stern duty for the soldiers. We are not to yield. That is the only order. We may die, but we may not surrender.”

“It would be the Chairman’s order,” Mayli said, remembering that soldier’s face with the eyes of the saint burning in it.

“Many will be wounded,” the doctor went on, “and we must be ready for day and night without sleep or rest, once the battle begins.”

She bowed her head, “I can eat and sleep or I can go without,” she said simply. “I have only one question — when do we go?”

“That one question no one can answer,” he replied. “It is locked in the mind of the One Above. When he gives the sign we go. But all is ready. One division indeed is already gone. Two more go within the next few days. Then we will go, or perhaps we go with them.”

She heard this and her heart immediately put another question of its own — was this Sheng’s division which had gone and was that why he had not come near her? But who could answer a question her heart asked? She sat silent, her eyes upon the doctor’s round patient face.

“We are not even sure where we are sent,” the doctor said. “There are those who say we go to Indo-China. There are those who say we go to join the white men in Burma. Others say we go both ways. We shall not know until our feet begin the path.”

Her heart cried out another question—“What if I go one way and Sheng another?”

But who could answer any question of the heart? She could not speak it aloud, and after a moment she rose.

“You will therefore be ready to leave at any moment,” he said.

“I shall be ready,” she said.