“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?”
The Promise: A Novel of China and Burma (Oriental Novels of Pearl S. Buck) Page 28