At this school it had been so also. He listened often to Meng’s talk of the same thing, how the country must be saved, for Meng had no other thing to talk of, if he did not talk of his cause, and he scarcely heeded his books at all these last days he was so busy in his secret meetings, and he and his comrades were always shaping protests against some authority in school or city and they made parades and marched along the streets carrying banners to cry against their foreign enemies and against evil treaties and against the laws of the city and of the school and against anything which was not in accordance with their own wish. They forced many to parade with them, even though these went sometimes against their will, for Meng could force his fellows by looks as black as any war lord’s, and he could roar and shout at a reluctant schoolmate, “You are no patriot! You are the running dog of foreigners — you dance and play while our country is destroyed by enemies!”
So Meng had even cried to Yuan one day when he pleaded he was busy and had no time for such parades. Sheng could laugh and jeer a little in his pleasant way if Meng came near him with his furious talk, for Meng was his younger brother first before he was the leader of young revolutionists, but Yuan was only cousin and he must evade the angry youth as best he could. And to this time the best hiding place had been his plot of land, for Meng and his comrades had no time for steady stupid plodding toil on land, and there Yuan was safe enough from them.
But now Yuan knew what it meant to save his country. Now he saw why the Tiger was an enemy. For, now, to save his country meant to save himself, and now he saw how his father was his enemy, and none could save him if he did not save himself.
Into the cause he threw himself. There was no need to prove his own sincerity since he was Meng’s cousin and Meng swore for him. And Meng could swear him true, because he knew Yuan’s reason for anger, and he knew the only surety of zeal for a cause is ever in such deep personal anger as Yuan now felt Yuan could hate the old because the old was now his particular enemy. He could fight to make his country free because only so could he be free. He went with Meng that same night, therefore, to a secret meeting held in a certain room in an old house at the end of a winding street.
This street was known as a street of prostitutes for poor men, and many men came and went there who were dressed anyhow and many young working men could come and go there and none remark them, because it was known what the place was. Down this street then Meng led Yuan. To the calls and noises of the place he paid no heed. He knew it well and did not even see the women who ran out from one door and another in search of trade. If one plucked at his sleeve too long he shook her hand away as though it were some senseless insect which annoyed him. Only when one laid too long a hold on Yuan did Meng shout out, “Let go of him! We have a certain place already—” He strode on, and Yuan beside him glad to be released, because the woman was so coarse and beastly in her looks and not young, so that she was very fearful in her leering fondness.
Then into a house they went where a woman let them in, and Meng turned up a stair and then into a room, and there were some fifty and more young men and women waiting. When they saw Yuan follow their leader in, the low talking ceased and there was an instant’s doubting silence. But Meng said, “You need fear nothing. This is my cousin. I have told you how I hoped he would join our cause because he has much help to give us. His father has an army even that one day might be for our use. But he was never willing. He never felt the cause clearly until today he knows what I have told him is the truth, that his own father is his enemy — as all our fathers are our enemies. Now he is ready — he hates enough to be ready.”
And Yuan, in silence listening to these words, looked round about on all those fiery faces. There was not one face there which was not somehow fiery, however pale it might be or however it was not beautiful, and the eyes of all looked the same. At these words Meng said, and at these eyes, his heart stopped a little. … Did he truly hate his father? Suddenly it was hard to hate his father. He wavered, stammering in his mind at that word hate — he hated what his father did — well enough he hated much his father did. At that very moment while he wavered someone rose out from a certain shadowed corner and came to him and put out a hand. He knew the hand and turning he looked into a face he knew. It was that maid, and she said in her strange lovely voice, “I knew some day you must join us. I knew there would be a thing to make you join us.”
At this sight and this touch, at the hearing of her voice, Yuan was so warmed and welcomed that he remembered freshly what his father did. Yes, if his father could do such a hateful thing as make him wed a woman he had never seen, then he did hate his father, too. He grasped the maid’s hand in his own. It was most wild and sweet to know she loved him. Because she was here and held his hand, he suddenly felt one of them. He looked quickly about the room. Why, they were all free here, free and young together! Meng was still talking. No one thought it strange that they two stood, a man and a maid, hand in hand, for here all were free. And Meng ended, saying, “I stand his guarantor. If he be traitor then I will die too. I swear for him.”
And the maid, when he had finished speaking, led Yuan out a few steps still holding fast his hand, and she said, “I, too — I swear for him!”
So she bound him to her and to her fellows. Without a word against it then Yuan took his pledge. Before them all and in the silence of all, his own blood was let a little with a small knife Meng drew across Yuan’s finger. Meng dipped a brush in the blood and Yuan took the brush and set his name in writing to the written pledge. Then they all rose together and received him and swore the pledge together, and gave a certain sign to Yuan to keep for proof of brotherhood and so was he at last their brother.
Now Yuan discovered many things he had not known. He found that this one brotherhood was netted to many scores of others everywhere and this net ran over very many provinces of that country and into many cities, and especially it ran southward, and the center of it all was in the great southern city where that school of war was. From that center there were given forth commands by secret messages. These messages Meng knew how to receive and read and he had his helpers who called together all the band, and then Meng told them what must be done, how a strike must be called or how a declaration must be written, and at the same time that he did this, in scores of cities was the same thing done, for thus were many young banded secretly in that whole country.
Every meeting of these brotherhoods was a step forward in the carrying out of a great plan of the future, and this plan was not so new to Yuan in truth, because he had heard of something much the same his whole life long. From his childhood his father had been used to say, “I will seize the seat of government and make a great nation. I will make a new dynasty,” for the Tiger had these same dreams in his youth. Then Yuan’s tutor had taught him secretly, “Some day we must seize the seat of government and make a new nation—” And in the school of war he heard it, and now he heard it still. Yet to many it was a new cry. To sons of merchants, sons of teachers, sons of quiet usual people, those sons who were beset with dull ordinary life, it was the mightiest cry that ever was. To speak of making a nation, of seeing the country rise to new greatness, of waging mighty wars against foreign peoples, made every common youth among them dream great dreams and see himself a ruler or a statesman or a general.