Now did he long for any sound to come out of the darkness, and he longed even to hear that lad calling for his mother. But the cell was still as though it were empty, and yet the darkness was not sleeping. No, it was a living waiting wakeful darkness, full of terror and of silence. He had not been afraid at first. But in the deep night he grew afraid. Death, which had not been real until this hour, now grew real. He wondered, breathless suddenly, if he would be beheaded or if he would be shot. These days the gates of inland cities, he had read, were decorated with the heads of the dead young men and women who had joined the cause, for whom the armies of deliverance had not come swiftly enough, so that before the day of battle they were caught by the rulers. He seemed to see his own head — and then it came to him like comfort, “But here in this foreign sort of city they will doubtless shoot us,” and then he wondered at himself with a bitter sort of mirth, even, that it could matter to him that he could keep his head on his shoulders when he was dead.
Now even as he sat crouched in this agony these hours through, his back thrust between two walls into a corner and his feet dragged close to him, so he sat huddled, the door opened suddenly and a grey beam of early light fell into the cell and showed the prisoners curled among each other like a heap of worms. The light stirred them into moving, but before any could move to rise, a voice roared forth, “Out with you all!”
And soldiers came into the cell, and pushing and prodding with their guns they roused them all, and now roused, that lad began his wailing, “Oh, my mother — oh, my mother—” and would not leave off even when a soldier smote him hard across the head with his gun’s butt, for he moaned these words as though he breathed them and could not help it, and must draw his life in so.
Now as these staggered forth, in silence otherwise than for this one, each knowing what was coming and yet dazed, too, a certain soldier held up a lantern that he had and flashed its light across each face. Yuan was the last of all, and as he came the light flashed across his face. This brightness blinded him suddenly after the long darkness of the night, and in that moment’s blindness he felt himself pushed back into the room, and pushed so hard he fell upon the beaten earth. Then instantly he heard the door lock, and there he was, alone and still alive.
Three times did this thing happen. For during that day the cell was filled again with new young men, and again through that night and two more nights Yuan must hear them, sometimes silent and sometimes cursing and sometimes whimpering and sometimes crying out in their madness. Three dawns came, and thrice he was thrust back into the cell alone and the door locked on him. He was given no food, nor was any moment given him for speech or question.
The first day he could not but have hope. And on the second day he had a lesser hope. But by the third day he was so faint and weak with no food and no water even to drink, that it seemed a little matter to him if he lived or died. That third dawn he could scarcely rise to his feet at all and his tongue was dry and swollen in his mouth. Yet the soldier shouted at him and prodded him and made him rise, and when Yuan clung to the door-frame with his two hands, again the light flashed across his face. But this time he was not thrust into the cell again. Instead, the soldier held him, and when the others were all gone their doomed and certain way, and when at last not even their footsteps could be heard echoing, the soldier led Yuan by another narrower passage to a place where a small barred door was set, and he drew back the bar and without a word thrust Yuan through that door.
Then Yuan found himself upon a small narrow street, such as wind through the inner, more secret parts of any city, and the street was still dim with early dawn and there was no one in sight, and out of his clouded mind Yuan could see this thing clearly, that he was free — somehow he had been freed.
Even as he turned his head this way and that to think how he could run, two came near out of the dusk, and Yuan shrank back against the door again. But one of the two was a child, a tall child, and she came running to him and came near and peered at him, and he saw her two eyes, very large and black and eager, and he heard this child call out in a low fervent voice, “It is he — here he is — here he is—”
Then the other came near, too, and Yuan saw her and knew it was his lady mother. But before he could speak, in spite of all his eagerness to speak and say it was he himself, he felt his body tremble on his feet and seem to melt away, and he suddenly could not see anything and the child’s dark eyes grew larger and blacker and then faded. From some very far distant place he heard a voice whisper, “Oh, my poor son—” and then he fell and heard and saw no more.
When Yuan awoke again he felt himself upon some moving swaying thing. He lay in a bed, but this bed rose and fell beneath him, and opening his eyes he saw he was in a small strange room where he had never been. Someone sat there watching him beneath a light set in the wall, and when Yuan summoned all his strength to look he saw this was Sheng, his cousin. And Sheng was watching Yuan, too, and when he saw Yuan looking he rose and smiled his old smile, but now it seemed to Yuan truly the gentlest sweetest smile a face could have, and he reached to a little table and fetched some hot broth in a bowl there and he said, soothing Yuan, “Your mother said the moment you awoke I was to give you this, and I have been keeping it hot these two hours on a little lamp she gave me—”
He began to feed Yuan as he might feed a child, and like a child Yuan said not a word, he was so weary and so dazed. He drank the broth down, too weak to wonder how he came here and what this place was, and like a child accepting all that was come about. He only felt the warm liquid very succoring and pleasant to his dry and swollen tongue and he swallowed it as best he could. But Sheng talked quietly as he dipped the broth up with the spoon, and he said, “I know you wonder where we are and why we are here. We are on a small ship, — a ship our uncle merchant has used to carry his goods back and forth to the nearest islands, and by his influence we are on it. We are to go across the nearest seas, and stay in the closest port and there we are to wait for papers we must have to go on to foreign parts. You are free, Yuan, but at a mighty price. Your mother and my father and my brother have laid hold on every sum they could and they borrowed much money of our second uncle, and your father was beside himself, and they said he kept groaning how he had been betrayed by a woman, too, and he and his son were done with women this time and forever. And he has given up your marriage, and sent all the money for it and all he could get and all these moneys together bought your freedom and our escape on this ship. High and low money has been paid—”
When Sheng said these words, Yuan listened, and yet he was so weak he scarcely could perceive their meaning. He could only feel the ship rise and fall beneath him and feel the good heat of the food slip down into his starved body. Then Sheng said, suddenly smiling, “Yet I do not know if I could have left happily even in such a case if I had not known Meng was safe. Ah, he is a clever one, that lad! Look here! I went grieving for him and my parents were distracted between you and him, and not knowing whether it was worse to know where you were and that you were to be killed, or not know where Meng was and that he might be safe or killed already. Then yesterday when I was on the street between your home and mine, someone thrust this bit of paper in my hand, and on it is Meng’s writing, saying, ‘You are not to look for me or be anxious, and my parents need not think of me again. I am safe and where I want to be.’ ” Sheng laughed and set down the empty bowl and struck a match to light a cigarette and he said gaily to Yuan, “I have not even relished smoking these three days! Well, that young rascal who is my brother is safe enough, and I have told my father, and though the old man is angry and swears he will not have Meng ever be as his son again, still I know by now he has let down his heart and gone to a feast tonight. And my elder brother will be at the theatre to see a new piece put on with a woman acting in her own right in this new fashion, and not a man dressed as a woman, for he is all agog to see the vileness in it. And my mother has been angry at my father for a while and so we are all ourselves again, now that Meng is safe and you and I are escaped.” He smoked a little and then he said, more gravely than his wont was, “But, Yuan, I am glad that we are going to other parts even though we go like this. I say little of it, and I will not join in any cause and I take my pleasure where I can. But I am weary of my country and its wars and though you all think me a smiling laughing fellow only thinking of my verses, yet the truth is I am very often sad and hopeless. I am glad to go and see another country and know how its people live. I feel my heart lift just to be going away!”