“I will tell En-lan tomorrow I was wrong,” he said stiffly. “He will appoint an hour and a place.”
“Why not here?” she asked. “Why should your schoolmate not come here? And why should I not serve you tea? Isn’t that my business?”
He did not answer. En-lan here! He had never thought of bringing any of his schoolmates here. Peng Liu once had come to the gate and he had not wanted him to enter. Since that day, too, Peng Liu had not liked him as well as before and they had seen little of each other. That Peng Liu, there was something mean in him. Everybody felt it, and En-lan gave him no authority, and yet no one could dismiss him from the band. So he came and went with them and they avoided him. Why should one poor man’s son be such a small mean creature and another poor man’s son be fearless and good like En-lan? But there was also the meanness of I-ko, who was a rich man’s son. They had had one letter from I-ko, complaining because he hated the sea and had got only so far as Bombay. He asked permission to stay in Bombay, but his father had cabled him, “Proceed to Germany. Funds forwarded there.” So I-ko had gone on to where those funds were. Whenever he thought of meanness such as Peng Liu’s he thought also of I-ko. There was something alike in those two.
Into these thoughts Peony broke.
“You never did tell me whether this En-lan was handsome or not.”
“I don’t know,” I-wan said shortly. He thought, “How foolish I was to tell her everything!”
“Ah, well, I shall see for myself,” Peony said.
She went out singing a little under her breath, and he said to himself again, “She is not thinking of the revolution at all.” He wished more than ever that he had never said anything to her. But it was this endless waiting that made everything seem wrong to him.
Nevertheless the next day, so that he might not bear the weight of the chance, he took advantage of a moment after a class when they copied an assignment together from a bulletin board, to tell En-lan what Peony had said.
En-lan listened and went on copying as though he did not hear.
“At least she is not stupid,” he said. Then he smiled, “I have never seen the inside of a rich man’s house. And after the revolution there will be no more of them to see.” He went on copying. “So, I will meet you at the gate at four o’clock. As she says, there is nothing remarkable in going to visit a schoolmate. That was clever of a slave to say.” He closed his book. “There, I am finished!” and went down the hall.
All day I-wan was uncomfortable. And now, when they came to his home, he was very uncomfortable. En-lan’s bright dark eyes were looking at everything quietly and fully. He had put on a clean school uniform and he had smoothed his hair and thrust a blue cotton handkerchief in his pocket. The uniform had shrunk a little and left his strong wrists bare and two buttons across his chest would not fasten so that his blue shirt showed. But it also was clean. Inside the door he paused and looked down at the thick red carpet.
“Am I to step on this?” he asked.
I-wan laughed. “It is foolish, but so you can,” he replied. He felt nervous and afraid of what En-lan would think of everything.
“If I had it I would sleep under it,” En-lan said. Nevertheless he stepped upon the carpet.
I-wan had told Peony that morning, “If I bring him home today, you are to manage so my grandmother does not make me come into her room.”
Peony had managed, for no sound came from his grandmother’s room. She was sleeping, doubtless, under her opium. He could smell it. En-lan sniffed.
“That here!” he remarked amiably. “I used to smell it in my village.”
“Did they use it there, too?” I-wan asked, surprised. He thought, somehow, that farmers only sold this opium for food.
“Didn’t I tell you rich and poor were alike?” En-lan said calmly.
They were going upstairs now. I-wan had told Peony, “If I bring him home today, manage it so I need not go to my grandfather’s room or my parents’—”
No one called and he led the way straight to his own room and En-lan followed.
“Now!” I-wan said, shutting the door. “Here we are free. You can say anything you like. The servants never come here unless I ring for them. And Peony will bring us tea herself in a little while.” He spoke quickly because he felt so ill at ease with En-lan here. He was ashamed of all that he had.
En-lan did not answer. He stood on the edge of bare floor, looking around the room.
“This is the place you come from every day!” he exclaimed.
I-wan could not bear the amazement in his face.
“I am used to it—I never think of it,” he stammered.
“My father’s whole house could go in this room,” En-lan said. Then he stepped to the carpet. “I should always feel it was wrong to walk on this,” he said. He stared down at the heavy fabric, blue and velvet beneath his feet. “How much does this cost?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I-wan muttered. “I didn’t buy it—it’s been here always.
He turned away and took off his coat and cap. But En-lan kept staring about him.
“Is that your bed?” he asked.
“Yes,” I-wan said.
“I never saw such a bed,” En-lan whispered. “I never saw anything like this—all that silk stuff—what is it for?”
“Curtains,” I-wan said shortly. Then he cried, “I can’t help it! I was born into this house. I don’t know anything else.”
En-lan sat down on a small chair and put his hands on his knees.
“I’m not blaming you,” he said slowly. “I am asking myself—if I had been born into this—would I ever have run away and joined the revolution? I don’t know. I can’t imagine any life except my own—having to work bitterly hard and not having enough to eat. If I’d been you—I don’t know.” He looked at I-wan. “I-wan, I think more of you than before.”
“Oh, no,” I-wan said, abashed. “It’s—I’m used to this—your life seems more interesting to me than this—”
“You have by birth what we are fighting for,” En-lan said. “Why, then, do you fight?”
I-wan had never thought of this before. Did he have everything? Why was he fighting, indeed?
“You have everything—” En-lan repeated, “everything!”
“I feel uncomfortable,” I-wan said. “I can’t tell you how I feel. When I am with my brigade I wish I could bring them here. But I don’t think they would like it here, either. Do you like it, En-lan?”
They looked around the room. For the first time I-wan saw it as a kind of life, and not a place in which to sleep and work.
“I don’t know,” En-lan said slowly. “It’s beautiful, but I don’t know. This thing soft under my feet all the time—it feels wrong. But then, I’m not born to it.”
“Do you wish you were?” I-wan pressed him.
En-lan did not answer for a moment. Then he shook his head.
“No,” he said firmly. “No. I am glad I was born as I was. What would I do here? I like to take off my coat and to spit on the floor.”
It was like a door shut in I-wan’s face. He felt suddenly cut off somehow from En-lan and from all for whom En-lan stood. He felt as a child feels shut into a garden alone when outside in the dusty open street other children are shouting and screaming in living play. But before he could speak the door opened and Peony came in with a tray of steaming bowls. She did not look up. She went to the table, and cleaning one end of it of books and papers, she set out bowls and chopsticks and between them a dish of small pork dumplings and another of balls of rice flour in a syrup of brown sugar.
“I thought you and your friend might like these,” she said in a quiet voice.
I-wan had not expected this of her, and he said gratefully, “Thank you, Peony.” Then turning to En-lan he said, “This is Peony, of whom I told you.” And to Peony he said, “This is En-lan.”
They looked at each other. Then En-lan rose to his feet and stood, twisting his cap round and round, and suddenly Peony said to
him, her voice very silvery and cool, “You need not rise to me. I am not one of the family. I am only a bondmaid.”
“As for that,” En-lan said, “I am only a peasant’s son. I have never even been in a house like this before.”
They looked at each other and I-wan felt himself more than ever the lonely child shut into the garden.
“You thought I might tell on you,” Peony said, slowly, “but I will never tell.”
And En-lan answered, his voice as low and slow as hers, “I don’t know why I thought you might tell—except I didn’t know you.”
Then Peony recalled herself. She looked away from him and she said to I-wan in her usual voice, “I-wan, you must eat while the dishes are hot. Sit down, both of you.”
“But,” En-lan said merrily, “why not the three of us?”
Now in all the years Peony had been in the house she had never eaten with I-wan. He had never thought of such a thing, and it was a surprise to him now, and Peony saw it was. She said quickly, “Oh, I am used to serving and not sitting.”
“I won’t sit down,” En-lan argued warmly, “unless we sit down together. In the revolution there is no such thing as one to be served and the other to serve, eh, I-wan? We are all equal!”
A light came into I-wan’s mind. How had he not thought of this before? He had been dreaming of revolution outside and he had not known how to make it come here in his own room. He forced away a foolish shyness he suddenly felt toward Peony.
“Yes, Peony,” he said, “sit down with us. Why not?”
So wavering between them, looking at one and the other of them, she grew as pink as her name flower. She said to I-wan, “And what if your father and mother should come to the door and see me sitting down with you? We couldn’t cry revolution to them!”
En-lan strode to the door and turned the key.
“Sit down,” he commanded her.
So she sat down across from them, her face still pink, and she began, a little stiff and grave, to serve their bowls full of the pork dumplings.
“So,” En-lan said, looking at them cheerfully, “how pleasant this is! I am hungry as a starved dog!”
I-wan was shy for a few minutes more and he struggled with this curious strangeness toward Peony, whom he had never seen sit down at a table with him. Then he forgot it. And he forgot his being the lonely child, for they were all eating together, and he was hungry, too. And Peony, daintily touching her chopsticks to this bit and that, let them eat for a little while. Then she leaned toward En-lan.
“Tell me,” she said to him gravely, “more about this revolution. I want to believe in it.”
So En-lan began, and listening, to him, and seeing Peony’s face as she listened, I-wan thought, “I believe in it, too—more than ever.”
It seemed come already, here in this room.
When En-lan was gone, Peony sat down again for a moment.
“You never made it plain to me what it was all about,” she said.
“You wouldn’t believe me,” he retorted.
She laughed. “Perhaps I didn’t. It’s hard to believe such big things coming out of a boy one knew when he was small. But that En-lan—he makes you believe it.” She mused a moment, her face changing with her thoughts. He could not read it and he felt vaguely jealous.
“I’m glad you believe, anyhow, Peony,” he said. “Now we can talk together. It won’t be so hard to wait.”
She rose. “Meanwhile I must go on as I always have,” she said. “Your grandmother will be waking.”
She collected the bowls.
“How he ate!” she said. “I like to see a young man so hearty.”
“Come back,” he begged her. “I want to talk some more.”
For when they talked it was all real and inevitable and nothing could hold back what was to come. But she shook her head. “No—not tonight,” she said firmly.
Nothing could stop the marching of that triumphant figure of Chiang Kai-shek. He had left Hankow and was proceeding down the river with his great army. Kiukiang, Anking, Wuhu—the cities on its bank fell like fruits into his hands. Shanghai grew hot with expectation and fear. The people on the streets were arrogant and noisy. Ricksha pullers idled and would not hire their vehicles and vendors did not care whether they sold anything or not. They threw dice on the sidewalks and played all day.
“Why should we work when Chiang Kai-shek is coming?” they said.
It was as gay as a festival. Even in I-wan’s home the servants grew impudent and careless. They were away for hours and when Madame Wu scolded them they said, “We have joined the union and we can do as we please.”
She complained to I-wan’s father and he said, “It is the same thing everywhere. But it can’t go on—we won’t have it.”
“How can you help it, Father?” I-wan asked. He was a little ashamed, as a matter of fact, because he too was inwardly astonished and even indignant when the dinner was not ready, although he knew that servants also must have their rights in the revolution, and indeed months ago he had listened to the plans for this very union of which they now spoke.
“This sort of thing cannot be tolerated,” his father replied shortly. “How can a nation prosper if its ignorant people are allowed to do as they like?”
He wanted to argue with his father. But he felt Peony touch his shoulder, warning him.
It was like the coming of a storm. There was the disturbance among the people like the first rufflings of the wind over the country and sea, and then there was the intense waiting stillness. Again I-wan felt shut off from everyone. The schools of the city suddenly declared a holiday at the mayor’s demand in order that students could be dispersed and could not hold meetings. The strike continued at the mills. En-lan had told I-wan to go there no more until he had the command, because they were all being watched. There was nothing for him to do except to wait in this quiet house and garden. But he could feel the end of waiting near. Now he was glad that Peony knew. They could talk sometimes, here and there, when no one was by. When a city fell and the news was cried in the streets and printed across newspapers, he looked at her triumphantly.
But he could never be quite sure how Peony felt. One day he asked her outright. She had come into the garden, where everything was breaking into bud. He had gone to look at a hawthorn flowering.
“Are you a real revolutionist, Peony?” he asked her quietly, fingering a budding branch.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I shall wait and see how it is.” She put out her hand and touched a red blossom.
“No, but what do you believe?” he urged her. “You must believe in right or wrong.”
“I am not a priest like you,” she said. “You believe in Chiang Kai-shek as though he were a god. I know he is a man.”
“No, I don’t,” he denied. “I don’t believe in any gods. But I believe in the revolution.”
“The revolution is still only what people do,” she replied. “If they do well, then I am one of them.”
He knew she was wrong. It was wrong to measure one’s belief by what people did. A thing was right or wrong in itself. But he could not forget what she had said. That night before he slept he locked his door and from a secret place in his desk he drew out a picture he had once cut from a magazine. It was a picture of the young Chiang Kai-shek. He sat looking at it. It did look a little like En-lan. It was a face at once bold and kind, harsh and dreaming. “I don’t worship him,” he thought, “but I believe in him.”
They all believed, thousands of young men and women intellectuals, thousands of men and women who were ignorant and poor. It had been a long time since they had anything in which they could believe and hope. Since the last corrupt dynasty had died in Peking, the people had had nothing. And the young, especially, had had nothing since Sun Yat-sen had died. Before he could become known to them he was only a memory. Therefore all their hopes fastened upon this young leader of the revolutionary army.
And now there was only one last great city to captu
re before he entered Shanghai. It was the ancient city of Nanking where once the Ming Emperors had ruled in such power and such glory and where they were buried. Everybody waited for Nanking to fall. The gates were locked in the great walls and the government soldiers were holding the city. But it would fall. For within the walls it too was honeycombed with people who wanted the revolution.
I-wan lived these last days in a sort of ecstasy, full of an excitement which was both pain and joy. There was the knowledge that everything he did was for the last time. He knew exactly what was to happen. As soon as the news came of Chiang’s victory he was to leave this house, never to return to it. He was to join En-lan and all the others at the revolutionary headquarters, to report for duty. He told Peony one night, whispering to her in his room. She listened steadily. She was different these days. He liked her better than he ever had. She did not touch him or tease him or arouse in him that warm sweet discomfort of which he was afraid. She was quiet and busy and he was not disturbed by her presence.
“You must come with me, Peony,” he told her at last.
“Tell me the name of the place,” she said. “Perhaps—”
So he wrote down the place and she looked at it. Then he burned the bit of paper.
“I do not promise,” she said. “I promise nothing.”
But she had seen the writing. And he knew she never forgot anything.
Of the moment of his own leaving he thought continually. He wanted to be sure to get away at the instant, so that he need not be here when the people were loosed. He knew now he did not want to see them here. Sometimes in the night he woke and then he lay awake and trembling, tempted to warn his father. But whenever he prepared to warn him he was held back because he knew his father would demand to know everything and then En-lan and the others would be lost. So he had to keep silence, though it was the hardest thing to keep.
And then one night, after three days of this intense waiting, the news flew into the city. Nanking had fallen. He went early to bed so that he need not hear his father’s talk, but it was impossible to sleep. This was his last night in this house. Tomorrow he would be he did not know where. And tossing on his bed, he made up his mind at last—or half made it up—before he went—no, he would leave it to Peony—he would tell her if she went she was to warn his parents and let them escape. Nothing could happen before noon. Twelve o’clock was the hour set for proclaiming the revolution. Between dawn, when he would leave this house, and noon, they could escape. He struggled a moment in himself. Was it betraying the revolution to warn them? But if Peony warned them and not he? Long after midnight he fell into a shallow half-dreaming sleep. In a few hours….