But Yuan was not so new to the cry, and often he could not shout so loudly as the others did, and sometimes he wearied them by asking overmuch, “How shall we do this thing?” Or he would say, “How can it save the country if we do not go to classes and spend our time only in parades?”
But he learned after a while to keep silence, for the others would not bear such talk, and it fell hard on Meng and on the maid if he did not do as the others did, and Meng told him privately, “It is not your right to question the orders that come through to us from above. We must obey, for only thus can all be ready for the great coming day. I cannot let you question thus, for the others may not, and they will say I favor my cousin.”
So Yuan must push down the question rising in him even then, which was to ask where the freedom was if he must obey what he did not understand. He told himself doubtless they would have freedom later and he told himself that there was no other way to go, for it was sure he had no freedom with his father, and he had cast in his lot now with these others.
Therefore he did his duty as it was appointed to him these days. He made flags ready for the days of parade, and he wrote out the petitions to teachers for this thing or that, because his writing was clear and better than most, and he made himself stay out of class on days of strike when teachers would not grant what had been asked, although he studied secretly that he might not miss the learning, and he went to certain laborers’ houses and gave them sheets of paper whereon were written for them sayings which told them how abused they were in their labor and how they were given too little wage and how their masters grew rich from them, and all such things they knew already. These men and women could not read, and Yuan read to them, but they heard him gladly and they looked at each other aghast to hear how they were oppressed even more than they had thought, and one and another would cry out, “Aye, it is true our bellies are never so full as they ought to be—” “Aye, we do work all the day and in the night and our children are not fed—” “There is no hope ahead for such as us. What is today is the same tomorrow and forever, for each day we eat all we make,” and they looked at each other fiercely and in despair when they found how cruelly they were used.
And Yuan looking at them and hearing them could not but be sorrowful for them, for it was true they were used cruelly many times, and their children were not nourished but were starving pale and worked at looms and at foreign machinery for many hours every day and often died there and none cared. Not even their parents cared overmuch, since children are so easily made and born, and are always more than can be wanted in a poor man’s house.
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.