Yet with all his pity the truth was Yuan was glad when he could go away, because there was always such a stink about these poor and his nostrils were fastidious. Even after he went home and was cleaned and far away from them he seemed to have the smell about him. In his quiet room with his books alone, he lifted up his head and smelled that odor. Though he changed his coat he smelled it. Even if he went out to some house of pleasure he smelled it. Above the scent of the woman in his arms while he danced, above the fragrance of clean well-cooked foods he could discern the stink of the poor. It penetrated everywhere and he loathed it. There was in Yuan this old shrinking which still kept him from giving himself wholly anywhere, because in everything there was some small thing to strike too coldly on his senses, and although he was ashamed he was so small, he knew he was a little cold in the cause for the shrinking of his flesh from this stink.
There was another trouble, too, in this fellowship he now was in, and often this obscured the cause and made a cloud between him and the others. It was the maid. For since Yuan had joined the cause it seemed this maid felt it sure that he was hers, and she could not let him be. Now there were other pairs among these youths, who lived together boldly and it was taken as a thing which could be done, and no talk made of it among the others. They were called comrades, and the bond between any two held only as long as the two wished it. And this maid so hoped that Yuan would live with her.
But here was a strange thing. If Yuan had not joined the cause, and had lived on his old pleasant dreaming life, not seeing the maid much, and only in the schoolroom, and only sometimes walking alone with her, then her boldness and her lovely voice and her frank eyes and hot-hearted hand might have in the end enticed him by strangeness and difference from the other usual maids he knew and saw more often who were friends of Ai-lan’s. For Yuan was very shy with maids, and so shy that boldness could seem enticing to him.
But now he saw this maid every day and everywhere. She marked him for her own and waited for him after every class and walked away with him, so that others saw it and many of his fellows jeered at Yuan and cried out at him, “She waits—she waits—you cannot escape—” and such ribaldry was always in his ears.
At first Yuan feigned not to hear it, and then when he must hear it he smiled in a sickly fashion, and then he grew ashamed and tried to linger long or to go out by some other unexpected way. And yet he could not face her bravely and say to her, “I am weary of your always waiting.” No, he could not but pretend to greet her, and when he went to the secret meetings, there she was, and always she had a place beside her saved for him, and all the others took it for a truth that they two were joined together in every fact.
And yet they were not, for Yuan could not love this maid. The more he saw her and the more she touched his hand, and now she took his hand often and held it long and made no secret at all of her longing, the less Yuan could love her. And yet he must value her because he knew her very faithful and truly loving to him, and though he was ashamed he did sometimes take advantage of this very faithfulness, for when he was commanded to do a thing he did not like to do, she was quick to see his reluctance and if it could be done, she cried out that it was what she wanted to do herself, and she managed it so that Yuan more often had what he liked best to do, some writing perhaps, or to go out to villages and talk to farmers there instead of to the city poor who did stink so vilely. So Yuan did not want to make her angry because he valued what she did for him, and yet he was man enough to be more than often ashamed because he took this service from her and still could not love her.
The more he denied her—though for long it did not come to words—the more passionate this maid’s love grew, until one day it did come to words, as all such things must. It happened on that day Yuan had been sent to a certain village, and he had wanted to go alone and come back by his bit of land and see how it did, for he had been too busy with the added work of this cause to be there as often as he liked to be. It was a most beautiful day in the late spring of that year, and he had planned that he would walk to the village and sit and talk awhile with the farmer folk and give his little books out secretly, and then wind eastward by his own bit of land. He liked the talk with the farmers, and often he talked with them not to persuade them by force, but as he might talk to anyone and he listened to them when they said, “But whoever heard of such things as these, that the land is to be taken from the rich and given to us? We doubt it can be done, young sir, and we would rather it were not, lest afterwards we be punished somehow. We are better as we are. At least we know our troubles. They are old troubles and we know them.” And among them often only those who had no land at all were those who thought the new times welcome.
But on this day when he had planned dreaming lonely pleasant hours, this maid found him and said in her sure way, “I will come with you and I will talk to the women.”
Now there were many reasons why Yuan did not want her. He felt constrained before her to speak more violently for the cause, and he did not love such violence. And he feared her touch upon him if she were alone with him. And he could not go by his own bit of land, lest that good farmer be there, and he had never yet told that farmer he now was joined to the cause, and he did not want that man to guess it, and so he did not want to go there with this maid. Yes, and more, he did not want this maid to see he cared how the plants grew whose seed he had sown himself. He did not want her to see the strange old close love he felt for such things, lest she be amazed at him. He did not fear her laughter, for she was one who never saw a thing to laugh at, but he feared her surprise and lack of understanding and her swift contempt for all she did not understand.
Still he could not shake her off, for she had so contrived that Meng had given her the command, and she must go. Therefore they set off together, Yuan silent and keeping to his own side of the road, and if she came over to him, he in a little while found an excuse to seek a smoother walking on the other side, and he was glad when the city road changed to the smaller country one and then this changed to a little path where they two must walk one behind the other, and Yuan went first so that he could look about him and not see her before him.
But be sure this maid understood before long how he felt. She made her talk at first very quietly, and as though she would not heed his short replies, and then she fell into silence, and at last they walked only in silence. And all the time Yuan felt her feelings rising in her and he dreaded her, and yet must go doggedly on. Now they came to a certain turn of road where willow trees had been planted long ago, and they were very old and the branches had been often cut and so often that the new branches of each year grew thick and tufted as brushes and met above the path and made a deep green hiding shade. Then as they passed through this quiet lonely place Yuan felt his two shoulders laid hold on from behind, and this maid twisted him about and cast herself against him and she burst into dreadful weeping and she cried, “I know why it is you cannot love me—I know where you go of nights—I followed you the other night and saw you with your sister, and how you went into that great hotel and I saw the women there. You like them better than you do me—I saw the one you danced with—that one in the peach pink gown—I saw her shamelessness the way she hung herself upon you—”
It was true that Yuan still went sometimes with Ai-lan, for he had never told his sister or the lady that he joined this cause, and though he often made excuse that he was busy and so could not go for pleasure so much as she did, yet he must go sometimes or Ai-lan would wonder, and that lady still hoped to have him go and keep her eased. When this maid wept out these words he remembered that a night or two gone by he had gone with Ai-lan to a party given for her nearest friend’s birthday at a great foreign hotel there in that city, and he had danced with this friend and there were vast glass windows in that hall which showed out upon the street, and doubtless it was true he could have been noted out from among the others by this maid’s searching knowing eyes.
He stiffened his body now and was angry an
d he said resentfully, “I went with my sister, and I was a guest and—”
But the maid had felt him turn cold under her hot hands and she flung herself back and cried in anger greater than his, “Yes, I saw you—you held her and did not fear to touch her, but you draw from me as if I were a very snake! And what do you think would come to you if I should tell the others that you spend your time with the very people whom we hate and against whom we all work? Your life is in my hands!”
Now this was very true, and Yuan knew it. But he only answered quietly and with scorn, “Do you think it is a way to make me love you, to speak to me like that?”
Then she fell against him again, weakened, and she sobbed softly against him, and lifted up his two arms and by her own strength held them about her and so they stood, and Yuan after a moment could not but be moved by her sobbing, and be sorry for her, and when at last she said, “You have so won me, and if it is against your will it is against mine, too, for I did not want to be won by any man—yet I know I would leave the cause before I could leave you—I am so wicked and so weak—” he felt his pity rise very swiftly, and then, though unwillingly, he held his arms where she had put them.
After a while she quieted herself and moved away and wiped her eyes and they went on again and now she was very sad and quiet, and they did their work and she spoke no more on that day.
But Yuan knew and she knew how the matter was between them. And here was the perversity in Yuan, that until this time he never had looked twice at any friend of Ai-lan’s, and they all looked alike to him, these pretty daughters of the rich, all with their high light merry voices and their tinkling laughter and their varied pretty clothes and jewels in their ears and smooth skin and painted fingernails and all such likenesses one to the other. He loved the rhythms of music and a maid added to the music and now he was not so disturbed as he had been at first by maids.
But this other maid’s incessant jealousies drove him strangely to look at the very ones against whom she complained, and their merriment was sweet to him because she was never merry, and he found a sort of pleasure in their gaiety and lack of any cause except to find pleasure anyhow. He began to single out two or three maids he liked above others, one the daughter of an old prince who had lived for refuge in this city since the empire had fallen down, and she was the smallest pretty maid he had ever seen, so perfect in her little beauty that Yuan liked to see her now he had taken thought to do it, and another older maid, who liked his youth and looks and while she swore she would not wed and would do her business all her life, which was to own and manage a shop for women’s garments in that city, still she liked to dally and Yuan pleased her, and he knew he did, and he found her sharp beauty, sword slender as she was, and her short black hair smooth as paint upon her head, a teasing prodding pleasure to him.
This little passing thought he took for these two maids and one or two more made him feel guilty when the other maid reproved him as she often did, and one day she was hot and pleading in her anger and another she was cold and hateful and Yuan was bound to her in strange comradeship, so that he felt tied, and yet he could not love her.
One day a few days before the day his father was to wed him in that far-off town he was thinking of it, and he stood melancholy and alone before the window in his room and looked down upon the city streets and thought distastefully that he must see that maid today, and then he thought, “I cry against my father, because he binds me, and yet what a fool am I that I have let her bind me, too!” And he was so struck that he had not thought of this before, how he had let his freedom go again, that he sat down and planned swiftly of what escape he now could have and how he might be free once more by some means from this new bondage, which in its way was as heavy as the other because it was so secret and so close.
Then suddenly he was freed. For all this time the cause had been strengthening itself in the south, and now the hour was struck, and out of the southern city the armies of the revolution marched swiftly through the very heart of that country. Suddenly as a great typhoon wind swings up the coast from the southern seas, those armies took on flesh and blood and truth, and they were filled with a power which made them more than human, almost, so that all about the country and into every city there ran ahead of them and behind them and on every side of them the tales of their strength and power and never-failing victories. For these armies were all young men, and among them were maids, too, all filled with secret power, so that they did not fight as soldiers do who only fight for pay. They fought for a cause which was their life, and so they were invincible, and the soldiers of the rulers, who were hirelings, ran before them like leaves before a bitter wind. Before them like a vanguard ran tidings of the terror of their strength and fearlessness and how death could not touch them, since they did not fear to die.
Then the rulers of the city were so much afraid they fell upon every revolutionist they knew within that city, lest these plot from within to join those who were to come, and there were many in other schools like Meng and Yuan and like that maid. This happened in three little days, that these rulers sent burly soldiers into every room where any student lived, and if anything were found, a book, a bit of paper, a flag or any symbol of the cause of revolution, then he was shot, and if it were a maid, then she was shot. In those three days there were so shot in that one city hundreds of such youths and maidens, and no one dared to say a word against it, lest he be held a friend of them and so lose his own life. And there were killed among the guilty many innocent, for there were evil men who had enemies who would not die, and these went and told secretly the names of those they hated and gave false witness of their being revolutionists, and on such bare word even were many killed, so great was the fear among the rulers that the revolutionists within the city would join the cause of those who came from outside to attack.
Then one day this thing took place without a warning. On a morning when Yuan sat in his class and at a very moment when he swore to himself he would not turn his head because he knew that maid was looking at him, and half he was about to turn because he felt somehow constrained to do it, suddenly there came into the room a band of soldiers and the captain of them shouted, “Stand and be searched!” Then every one of them stood dazed and wondering and frightened while soldiers passed their hands over their bodies and looked at their books, and one took down into a book the names of where they lived. In utter silence was this done, the teacher standing silent, too, and helpless. There was no sound except the clanking of the soldiers’ swords against their leather heels and the sound of their thick shoes upon the wooden floor.
Out of that silent, frightened roomful three were singled out because something was found upon their persons. Two were lads, but the third one was that maid, who had a guilty paper in her pocket. Those three the soldiers held before them, and when they turned to go, they prodded them with bayoneted guns to hasten them. This Yuan watched, staring dazed and helpless to see the maid go out like this. And at the door the maid turned back her head and gave him one look, one long, imploring, speechless look. And then a soldier touched her sharply with his pointed gun and pushed her on, and she was gone, and Yuan knew he would never see her any more.
His first thought was, “I am free!” and then he was half ashamed because he could not but be glad, and yet he could not but remember, too, that great tragic look the maid had given him as she went, and somehow he felt himself guilty for that look, because though with her whole heart she loved him, he had not loved her. Even while he justified himself and cried in his silent self, “I could not help it—could I help it if I did not want her?” there was another smaller weaker voice which said, “Yes, but if I had known she was to die so soon—could I have comforted her a little?”
But his questionings were soon stopped, for there could be no more work that day, and the teacher gave them dismissal and they all hastened away from that room. But in the hastening Yuan felt his arm taken and he looked and there was Sheng, and Sheng led him secretly aside whe
re none could hear and he whispered, his smooth face for once all in a disarray of fright, “Where is Meng?—he does not know of this raid today and if he is searched—my father will die of it if Meng is killed.”
“I do not know,” said Yuan, staring back. “I have not seen him these two days—”
But Sheng was gone, his agile body slipping swiftly in and out among the throngs of silent, frightened students pouring now from every room.
Then Yuan went by small quiet streets to his own home and there he found the lady and he told her what had come about, and he said to ease her at the end, “Of course I have nothing I need fear.”
But the lady’s mind went more deeply than did Yuan’s, and she said swiftly, “Think—you have been seen with Meng—you are his cousin—he has been here. Has he not left a book or paper or any least thing in your room? They will come here to search. Oh, Yuan, go you and look while I think what I am to do with you, for your father loves you, and if you should suffer anything it would be my fault because I did not send you home when he commanded it!” And she was in more fear than Yuan had ever seen upon her.
Then she went with him to his room to look at all he had. And while she looked at every book and in each drawer and on each shelf, Yuan bethought him of that old letter of love the maid had sent which he had never torn to pieces. He had kept it between the pages of a book of verse, not that he valued it but at first it was precious to him because after all it spoke of love—the first word of love in his whole life and so for a while magic for its own sake and then he had forgotten it. Now he took it out while the lady’s back was turned, and he crushed it in his hand and made some excuse and left the room and slipped into another room and set a match to it. While it burned between his thumb and finger, he remembered that poor maid and how she had looked at him, the look a hare might give before the wild dogs fell upon it to devour it. And Yuan was filled with a great sadness when he thought of her, a sadness strangely deeper somehow, because even now, now more than ever, he knew he did not love her and that he never could have loved her, and he was not even sorry for her death, though he felt guilty that he was not. So the letter fell to ash between his fingers and then was dust.