And the young men threw themselves down upon a bank by the edge of the field, and it was true the sweat poured down their pale faces and their bodies heaved with their panting. Only the two or three country lads among them were not in such a plight.
Then while they rested Yuan opened up his good foreign seed, and each youth held his two hands cupped and into their hands Yuan poured the full golden grains. This seed seemed very precious to him now. He remembered how he had grown it ten thousand miles away on foreign soil, and he remembered the old white-haired man. He could not but remember also the foreign woman who had put her lips to his. Pouring the grain out steadfastly, that moment came again into his mind. He wished she had not! Yet that moment after all had saved him and sent him on alone until he found Mei-ling. He took up his hoe swiftly and began to swing it up and down into the earth. “See,” he cried to the watching pupils, “so the hoe must be swung! At first it is possible to waste much strength because one does not wield the hoe like this—”
Up and down his hoe swung in the way that old farmer had taught him, its point flashing in the sunlight. One by one the young men rose and tried to swing as he did. But the last and slowest to rise were the two country lads, and they, although they very well knew how to swing their hoes, moved slowly and reluctantly. Then Yuan saw it and he called out sharply, “How is it you will not work?”
At first the lads would not answer, but then one muttered sullenly, “I did not come to school to learn what I have done all my life at home. I came to learn a better way to earn my living.”
Now Yuan grew angry when he heard this, and he answered swiftly, “Yes, and if you know how to do it better you would not need to leave home to find a way to earn more. Better seed and better ways to plant it and greater harvests would have made your life better, too.”
Now there had gathered about Yuan and these pupils of his a handful of farmers from the village, and they stood staring in great wonder to see these young students come out with hoes and seed. At first they were afraid and silent, but soon they began to laugh to see how the young men could not strike their hoes into the soil. When Yuan said these words, they felt at ease and one shouted out, “You are wrong, teacher! However man works himself and whatever seed he sows, the harvests rest with heaven!”
But Yuan somehow could not bear to be contradicted so before his pupils, and so he would not answer this ignorant man. Without seeming to have heard the foolish speech, he showed his pupils how to scatter the seed into the rows, and then how deep to press the soil above the seed, and how to put a sign at the end of each row to show the name of the kind of seed, and when it was planted and by whom.
All these things the farmers watched agape, making merry over such great care, and they laughed freely and cried out, “Did you count each seed, brother?” And they cried, “Have you given each little seed its name, brother, and marked the color of its skin?” And another cried, “My mother! And if we took such care of every little seed, we would not have time to reap more than one harvest in ten years!”
But the young men who followed Yuan were disdainful of these coarse jests, and the two country lads were angriest of all and cried out, “These are foreign seeds and not such common stuff as you plant in your fields!” And the jokes of the farmers made them work with more zeal than their teacher could.
But after a while the merriment died out of the watching men, and their looks grew sullen and they fell silent. One by one they pat as if by chance, and turned and went back to their hamlet.
But Yuan was very happy. It was good to sow seed again and to feel the earth in his hands. It was thick and rich and fertile, black against the yellow foreign grain. … So the day’s work was done. Yuan felt his body fresh with good weariness, and when he looked he saw the young men, even the palest one, had a new healthy look, and all were warmed, although a sharp wind blew against them from the west.
“It is a good way to be warmed,” Yuan said, smiling at them. “Better than any other fire.” The young men laughed to please Yuan, for they liked him. But the village lads stayed sullen in spite of their reddened cheeks.
That night in his room alone Yuan wrote it all down to Mei-ling, for it had come to be a thing as necessary as food and drink to him to end his day by telling her what it held. When he was finished he rose and went to the window and looked out over the city. The dark tiled roofs of the old houses huddled here and there, black in the moonlight. But thrusting up everywhere among them sharply were the tall new houses, red roofed — angular and foreign, their many windows shining with inner light. Across the city the few great new streets flung out wide pathways of light and glitter and dimmed the moon.
Looking at this changing city, seeing it and yet not seeing it much either, because he saw most clearly Mei-ling’s face, very clear and young before his mind, the city only a background for her face, suddenly the fourth line of his verse came to his mind as finished as though he saw it printed down. He ran to the table and seized the letter he had just sealed, and tearing it open he added to it these words, “These four lines came to me today, the first three on the land, but I could not find the last perfecting line until I came back to the city and I thought of you. Then it came as simply as though you had spoken it to me.”
So Yuan lived in this city, his days full of his work, and his nights full of his letters to Mei-ling. She did not write so often to him. Her letters were sedately put, the words few and exact But they were not dull, because her words, since they were so few, were full of her meaning. She told him Ai-lan had come back after her months away, for those two had stayed their month of play over several times and were only now come home, and Mei-ling said, “Ai-lan is more beautiful than ever, but some warmth has gone out of her. Perhaps her child will bring this back. It will be born in less than a month. She comes home often because she says she sleeps better in her old bed.” And she told him, “Today I did my first real operation. It was to cut off the foot of a woman which had been bound in childhood until it was gangrened. I was not frightened.” And she said, “I ever love to go and play with the foundling babes, of whom I am one. They are my sisters.” And she told often of some merry childish thing they said.
Once she wrote, “Your uncle and his eldest son have sent a command for Sheng to come home. He spends too much silver, they say, since they can collect no rents these days from the old lands, and the eldest son’s wife is not willing for her husband’s wage to be sent abroad and there is no great sum to be found otherwise. Therefore Sheng must come, because he is to have no more money.”
This Yuan read thoughtfully, remembering Sheng as he had last seen him, excellently clothed in new garments, swinging a small shining cane as he walked along a sunny street in that great foreign city. It was true he spent much money since he was careful of his beauty. Doubtless he must come home — doubtless it was the only way to make him come home. Then Yuan thought, remembering the fawning woman, “It is better for him to come home. I am glad he must leave her at last.”
Always Mei-ling answered very carefully every question Yuan wrote to her. As the winter deepened she cautioned him to wear a thicker coat and to eat well, and he must sleep long and not work too hard. Many times she bade him take care against the winds in the old schoolroom. But there was one thing she never answered in his letters. He said in every letter, “I am not changed. I love you — and I wait.” This she did not answer.
Nevertheless Yuan thought her letters very perfect ones. Four times a month, as certain as the day came, he knew he could expect to find upon his table when he went to his room at night the long shape of her letter and her writing on it, clear and somewhat small in shape. These four days in each month came to be his feast days, and for sheer pleasure in his certainty he bought a little calendar and marked ahead the days he would have her letters. He marked them in red, and there were twelve in all until the New Year, when there was holiday and then he might go home to her and see her face. Beyond that he would not mark because he had his secret hope.