“You always say your sons are good,” his father now shouted at her. “Two months ago I thought something was wrong in the bank. But no, you said, I-ko is so good—I-ko could do no wrong! And so everybody knew but I—I have been made into a fool by my own son!”
He had mimicked his wife’s high soft voice, and she began to cry, and I-ko hung his head again.
“I-ko,” his grandfather commanded him, “sit down!”
I-ko sat down by the table, without looking up.
“Do you know what you have done?” his grandfather inquired. “It seems to me you do not.”
“I don’t think it’s so bad,” I-ko said in a sullen half-whisper.
His father started. “You don’t—” he began.
“Be quiet,” the old man commanded. “I am speaking. I-ko, you have taken a great deal of money that was not yours.”
I-ko did not answer at once. Then he said in the same sullen voice, “It’s not as if my father were not the president of the bank.”
I-wan saw his father set his lips without speaking.
The old man put his hand to his head.
“Do you know whose money is in the bank?” the old man inquired. “It is the money of other people—of many people. There is even government money there. People trust your father. They trusted his son.”
The room was quiet except for the old man’s stern voice.
I-wan thought, “I-ko has done this!”
“Why did you do it, I-ko?” he blurted out. “You always have money.”
He saw I-ko’s eyes steal toward him hostilely, but I-ko did not answer.
“Why did you do it?” his father suddenly bellowed at him. “We have all asked you, and I-wan asks you, too. Have I ever denied you anything? You had only to come and ask me!”
“I didn’t want to ask you,” I-ko answered, goaded.
There was silence to this. They all looked at him. He looked from one to the other of them.
“I—I—” he began. He stopped, then rushed on: “Why do you all look at me so? I—I—I didn’t take it all at once—for any one thing. Tse-li said, ‘Let’s do this—or this’—some little thing—I don’t know—and he hadn’t the money, so he said, ‘I-ko, you always have plenty of cash.’ And they all got to saying that—and I was ashamed to say I hadn’t plenty—” He was half crying again. His smooth hair was falling over his face. He turned on his father. “You—you say, why don’t I ask you—it’s because you scold me—you’re always scolding me—ever since I can remember. I—I’d rather take the money than have to ask you and have you—you yell at me, ‘Again—again!’”
“It’s true,” his mother cried at her husband. “You have always been so harsh to him!”
“And who was to save him otherwise in this house?” his father shouted at her. “A lot of women spoiling him, teaching him to cheat, to lie, by pretending to obey me when I am here! You are to blame—women like you are to blame for all the corruption in the country! Do you think I don’t know? I was a rich man’s son, too—in a house full of women and slaves!”
I-wan said not one word. He had his life elsewhere now, and though this house fell to pieces, he would not fall with it. But when his father said what he did to his mother, he thought with a sort of curiosity of him as a man, to wonder why he was not spoiled, then, as I-ko was. Something had come to save his father just as he himself had been saved by happening upon certain books and then upon En-lan and the band and the men in the mill, and through all of these upon the whole age of revolution which was to come. In a sense the revolution had already saved him.
“What can I do with you, I-ko?” his father asked. His voice changed to sadness. “What can any man do with a worthless son?”
His grandfather spoke.
“Nevertheless he is your son and my grandson, whatever he does. We must return the money. And let us send him abroad to some school where he must work and where he can leave these idle companions.”
I-ko did not speak. But I-wan could see he was waiting to hear what his father said.
“That is the best thing to do,” his mother said in her soft eager way. “No one will know—and so many young men go abroad to study now. It is exactly the thing.”
“Cover it all up—cover it all up,” his father said bitterly. “That is the way—no one need know, and so he will never learn the difference between evil and good!”
“I will never do it again,” I-ko said in a whisper. “I have learned. I will do whatever you say.”
His father rose suddenly.
“Get out of my sight,” he said to I-ko, not loudly, but his voice low and cold. “Put your things together. You will go to Germany—go to a military school and let them see what they can do with you. I will have your ticket bought, or you will spend the money.”
“Yes, that’s right,” the old man agreed, “that’s best. The Germans will teach him.”
“Get away from me,” his father said to I-ko.
Without speaking, I-ko turned away and went out. They heard him cross the hall and the door of his room opened and shut.
In this room nothing was said. Then his grandfather struck a match, lit his cigar at last, and smoked a moment. Until he spoke no one would speak.
“I will go to bed,” he said, and he rose to his feet.
“Let me go with you,” his son said.
“No,” the old man replied. “I can go alone—”
When the door shut behind him, I-wan’s father turned to his mother.
“Will you retire?” he asked.
And she knew he meant she must, so she rose, wiping her eyes, and went into the next room.
Then I-wan was left alone with his father. He had risen while his grandfather and mother left the room.
“Sit down,” his father said. So he sat down, and his father looked at him.
“Will you take your elder brother’s place?” he asked abruptly. He had a small toy in his hand, a paperweight made like a pagoda, and he played with it restlessly. I-wan’s eyes moved to his father’s strong smooth hands. They were powerful hands, though the flesh on them was as soft as Peony’s cheek.
He felt his father near as he had never done before. He felt the depths of his father’s disappointment in I-ko, and that now he needed comfort. He thought, “I wish I could tell my father everything.” But the fear that hangs between the generations would not allow him. He could not forget that his father was the same man he had always been, and that if he did not like a thing he could not comprehend it, however good and right it was. So I-wan held back his desire to confide in him, but still he could not wholly refuse his father. So he said, “Will you let me tell you, Father, at the end of the school year?”
Before then, he thought, it will be another world.
His father stared at him and nodded.
“Let it be, then,” he said. “Now you go away, too. I don’t know why men want sons now-a-days. In the past men had sons for their old age, so that they could be sure of care. But no one can hope for such care now from the young.”
He rose and without looking at I-wan, he also went into the other room. And I-wan, left alone, went back to his own room. His father, whom he had thought of always as a proud man, satisfied and able to have anything he liked, he now saw was neither proud nor satisfied, nor had he what he wanted. He thought, puzzling, “It still is not enough to feed men and give them enough money for all their needs.” The men in the mill wanted only food and shelter secure, and they would be happy. No, but plenty of people had these things and they were not happy. How would the revolution help these? Pondering this, he opened the door to his own room and Peony sat there by his table, waiting. Her pretty oval face was solemn.
“What is it?” she whispered. “Has I-ko killed someone?”
“No,” he answered, “not that.”
“Then what?” she urged him. “I know it is something wicked. Your grandmother kept weeping. She said your father was going to beat I-ko to death.”
“Of course not,” I-wan said scornfully. “But he is to be sent abroad.”
“Sent abroad!” Peony cried joyfully. “At once!”
I-wan nodded.
“Then he did kill someone!” Peony cried. “I am sure he did!”
“No, he didn’t,” I-wan said. “He took some money.”
“From the bank?” she exclaimed.
“Yes,” I-wan said. “Why do you hate him so much?”
“I can’t tell you,” she said. “I don’t want to tell you. You can’t imagine how hard it has been to be a slave in this house—with I-ko growing up—and always at home—not away at school.”
She turned her head away.
“You haven’t been treated as a slave,” I-wan said.
“You don’t know!” she cried with passion. “You don’t know anything about me!”
And to his astonishment she put her face in her hands and began to weep in great loud sobs.
He stood helpless, watching her.
“Don’t cry, Peony,” he said, “I beg you not to cry.”
But she cried through her sobs, “I have been only a slave—an old woman telling me to do this and to do that—getting me up in the night to rub her old sticks of legs, and to make her opium ready. I’m so sick of that smell—”
“Do you hate that smell, too?” he asked.
“Yes,” she sobbed. “I run into my room so sick—but I have to come back again to it—and your mother at me—”
“Why?” I-wan asked. He began to see a whole life going on in this house of which he had not been aware.
Peony stopped crying. “Because of I-ko,” she said in a low angry voice. “She says I must do what I-ko wants—who am I, she says, but a slave?”
“My mother said that?” I-wan stared at her and felt his heart begin to thump in a slow thick beat.
She nodded.
“But you haven’t?” I-wan demanded.
She shook her head.
“I’ve thought of eating some of the opium and killing myself,” she said. “I’ve often thought of it. Because what have I to live for, I-wan? I’m not a servant, to be happy among servants. I’ve been taught to be something more—but still not enough to be free. I suppose you think I ought to be grateful your mother let me learn to read and write when you did. I used to be grateful, but I’m not now. I wish I had been left ignorant if I am not to—be any better than this. Then I could have married—someone lowly—and been content. It’s so wrong!” she cried. “It’s so wicked to let people know there are good things in life and then deny them!”
He could not say a word. Peony had been living like this for years and he did not know it! He thought she was happy and well-treated. That she had to serve them was only, he had thought, what she should do in return. But now he saw what she meant. She was not free. This house where she had plenty to eat and silk robes to wear was still only a prison. He thought, “She needs the revolution, too, to set her free.”
In that moment he made up his mind that he would tell Peony everything.
“Peony—” he began. His heart was beating like a clock now, very fast.
She looked at him.
“I want to tell you something,” he went on.
“Yes?” she asked. “What is it?”
“Peony, have you ever heard of the revolution?”
“Of course I have,” she said. “It’s not a good thing. I’ve heard your father talk about it. He said revolutionists are like bandits.”
“No, they’re not!” he exclaimed.
“How do you know?” she asked.
Now he would tell her, straight out.
“Because I am one of them.”
They looked at each other, and neither moved.
“I-wan!” she whispered.
He nodded.
“If your father knew! He would think you were more wicked than I-ko!”
This struck him. “I believe he would,” he agreed.
“You must never tell him,” she exclaimed. “Oh, I wish you hadn’t told me! I feel as if you had put your life into my hands. I-wan, you will be killed! Why did you?”
And then he began to tell her everything, how in books he first discovered that men’s minds had thought and dreamed of a new world. He told her of En-lan and of the band and of the mills. She listened to everything without a movement or a word. And he talked to her as he had never talked to anyone, not even to En-lan, because he had no shyness before Peony. But the strange thing was that he spoke not only to her but to himself. He was giving shape as he talked to all his faith in what was to come, and to all his hope of it.
“When is all this to happen?” Peony interrupted him.
“Soon,” he whispered, “as soon as Chiang Kai-shek comes.”
She stared at him a moment. Then she shrugged her shoulders.
“I don’t believe it,” she declared.
“You don’t believe—Peony!” he cried. “I tell you it’s true.”
“I know you think it’s true,” she retorted, “but you’re only a boy. I don’t believe people will do things for other people for nothing. And all your revolutionists—what are they but people like everybody else?”
“You don’t know them,” he insisted. “You’ve only known people like—like my family. Naturally you think everybody is selfish. But that’s because they’re capitalists.”
“I don’t know what you mean by capitalists,” she said, pouting. “I know this, though, that when people have money they don’t mind giving some of it away, but whoever heard of poor people being unselfish? They want everything then for themselves.”
“But you don’t understand,” he cried at her. “There won’t be any rich and poor!”
“Oh, don’t be silly!” she answered.
He was so angry with her he wanted to slap her cheek.
“I wish I hadn’t told you,” he said shortly. “I told you to make you happy—and let you know soon you will be free. There won’t be any slaves after Chiang Kai-shek comes.”
“Oh, him!” she said, and laughed. “He’s only a man, isn’t he?” Then she was sad again. “No,” she went on, “where would I go if I were free? I don’t know anything except this house. Where could I find shelter? No, if I have been born to be a slave, I am a slave.”
It was the old hopelessness of the mill workers, coming from Peony’s red lips as she sat, a little satin-clothed figure, there in his chair. Her pretty hands with jade and gold rings were playing with the things on his desk. Was all the world hopeless except himself and those like him? He was clouded with a sort of sadness, watching her hands. It came to him again that there was more to all this revolution than merely feeding and clothing the poor. There was much more. What answer, for instance, could he give to Peony, when she asked him where she would find shelter if she were free? He could not say because he did not know.
“I suppose,” he said aloud, hesitating, “that food will be given to everyone somehow. Certainly in the revolution no one will be allowed to starve. Things have to be organized, of course.”
She did not answer. When she spoke again he was not in the least prepared for what she said. She looked up brightly, as though she had forgotten herself, and she said, her voice cosy and warm and full of interest, “Tell me about that En-lan—is he handsome?”
He was too disgusted to answer. To think of En-lan thus was to insult him. Girls—why did anyone think a girl could hold anything in her mind? Peony was not fit for revolution. She was as she said, born to be a slave—thinking about nothing but—
“I don’t know,” he answered curtly. He got up suddenly. “I want to sleep, Peony. It must be nearly dawn.”
She rose, hiding a small graceful yawn behind the back of her hand, her painted rosy palm turned outward. She had not understood the importance of anything he had told her. And it was true that he had put his life in her hands.
But she leaned forward and touched his cheek with her finger.
“Don’t think I shall forget wha
t you have said,” she told him. “I never forget anything you ever say. I lock it all up in me and take it out only when I am alone, to see and to think about. It’s all I have—Oh, but, I-wan, you won’t let them catch you!” She locked her hands together tightly.
“No, of course not,” he answered and relented a little toward her. “Besides, it’s only a little while.”
“I have no faith in all that revolution,” she broke in. “It only frightens me. I wish you hadn’t told me—except that—it helps me understand something.”
“What?” he asked. There was another look now in her face, a look of stillness.
“It helps me to understand you,” she said, “and why your heart is not to be touched.” She waited a moment. Then she said, “You are like a young priest, I-wan. I saw that when you were telling me. It explains—everything.”
She was at the door now and she smiled at him, a flicker of a smile.
“Good night,” she said, and closed the door between them.
He had not the least idea what she meant, and he forgot it instantly, because it could not be important.
What Peony had said, that he was like a young priest, he really did not hear, even when she said it, because he was so centered on what he was telling her. If he had comprehended it he would have been angered, for it was part of the plan that all priests should be driven out of the temples, since they deceived the people. I-wan had tried to drive them out of the minds of the men whom he taught. Whenever they said, as the poor will say anywhere, “Heaven will protect us,” he cried out, “Heaven will never protect you, because there is no heaven!”
The first time he said this not one of them answered him. It was a holiday, the three days’ holiday of the New Year, which is given even to the poor, and they had met together in an open field beyond the town. I-wan had taken his own money and bought tea and New Year’s cakes for them at a country tea house, and then they had come away where there were no walls.
“What is that above us, then, if there is no heaven?” a man asked, and he pointed to the sky.
“Air—and cloud,” I-wan answered.
“And beyond that?” the man persisted.
“Nothing,” I-wan answered.