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 and 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.