Thus Yuan lived from seventh day to seventh day, scarcely caring to go elsewhere than to his work, and needing no friends because his heart was fed.
Yet Meng would come sometimes and force him forth and then Yuan sat in a teahouse somewhere for an evening and listened to Meng and his friends cry out their impatience. For Meng was not so triumphant as he seemed at first. Yuan listened and he heard Meng angry still, and still he cried out against the times, even these new times. On one such night in a teahouse newly opened in the new street Yuan sat at dinner with him and four young fellow captains, and these were all dissatisfied with everything. The lights above the table were first too bright and men not bright enough, and the food was not brought fast enough to please them, and they wanted a certain white foreign wine that was not to be had. Between Meng and the other four the serving man was in a sweat, and he mopped his shaven head and panted and ran to and fro, afraid not to please these young captains who carried shining weapons at their belts. Even when the singing girls came in and after the new foreign fashion danced and threw their limbs about, the young men would not be satisfied, but spoke loudly of how this one’s eyes were small as any pig’s eyes, and that one had a nose like a leek, and one was too fat and one too old, until the girls’ eyes were full of tears and anger. And Yuan, though he did not think them beautiful, could not but pity them and so he said at last, “Let be. They have their rice to earn somehow.”
At this one young captain said loudly, “Better they starve, I say,” and laughing their loud bitter young laughter they rose at last with a great clatter of their swords and parted.
But that night Meng went on foot with Yuan to his room and as they walked along the streets together, he spoke his discontent and he said, “The truth is we are all angry because our leaders are not just to us. In the revolution it is a principle that we shall all be equal and all have equal opportunity. Yet even now our leaders are oppressing us. That general of mine — you know him, Yuan! You saw him. Well, and there he sits like any old war lord, drawing a great pay each month as head of the armies of this region, and we younger ones are kept always in one place. I rose quickly to be a captain, and so quickly I was full of hope and ready to do anything in our good cause, expecting to rise yet higher. Yet though I work and spend myself I stick here, a captain. We all can rise no higher than being captains. Do you know why? It is because that general fears us. He is afraid we will be greater than he is some day. We are younger and more able, and so he keeps us down. Is this the spirit of the revolution?” And Meng stopped beneath a light and poured out his hot questions at Yuan, and Yuan saw Meng’s face as angry as it used to be in his sullen boyhood. By now the few passers-by were staring side-wise curiously and Meng saw them and he dropped his voice and went on again and at last he said very sullenly, “Yuan, this is not the true revolution. There must be another. These are not our true leaders — they are as selfish as the old lords of war. Yuan, we young ones, we must start again — the common people are as oppressed as they ever were — we must strike again for their sakes — these leaders we have now have forgotten wholly that the common people—”
Now even as Meng said this he paused and stared, for just ahead at a certain gateway to a very famous pleasure house there was a brawl arising. The lights from that pleasure house shone down as red and bright as blood, and in the light they saw a very hateful sight. A foreign sailor from some foreign ship, such as Yuan had seen upon the great river which flowed past the city, in half drunkenness was beating with his coarse clenched fists the man who had pulled him to that pleasure house in his vehicle. He was shouting in his drunkenness and anger and staggering stupidly upon his clumsy feet. Now Meng when he saw how the white man struck the other, started forward and he began to run swiftly and Yuan ran after him. As they came near they heard the white man cursing foully the ricksha puller because he dared to ask for more coin than the white man wished to give and under his blows the man cowered, shielding himself with his upraised arms, for the white man was large and rude in body, and his drunken blows were cruel when they fell.
Now Meng had reached them and he shouted at the foreigner, “You dare — you dare—!” and he leaped at the man and caught his arms and pinioned them behind his back. But the sailor would not submit so easily, and he did not care that Meng was a captain or what he was. To him all men not of his kind were the same and all to be despised and he turned his curses on to Meng, and the two would have jumped upon each other then and there in mutual hatred, except that Yuan and the ricksha puller sprang between them and fended off the blows, and Yuan besought Meng, saying in an agony, “He is drunk — this fellow — a common fellow — you forget yourself,” and while he cried he made haste to push the drunken sailor through the gate to the pleasure house, where he forgot the quarrel and went on his way.
Then Yuan put his hand to his pocket and brought forth some scattered copper coin and gave them to the ricksha man, and so settled the quarrel, and the man, who was a small old weazened fellow, never fed well enough in a day, was pleased to have the thing end thus, and in his gratitude he cackled out a little laughter, and he said, “You understand the doctrines, sir! It is true enough one ought not to blame a child, nor a woman, nor a man drunk!”
Now Meng had stood there panting and very hot with anger all this time, and since he had not freed his anger fully on the sailor it was more than half in him still, and he was beside himself. When he saw how easily the beaten man was assuaged with a few copper coins and when he heard the poor laughter and the old adage he put into words again, Meng could not bear it. No, in some strange way his clean right anger against the foreigner’s insult to his own kind soured and without a word his eyes blazed out anew now upon the ricksha puller, and he leaned and gave the man’s face a blow across the mouth. Yuan saw Meng do this thing, and he cried out, “Meng, what is it you do!” And he made haste to find a coin again to give the man for such a cruel blow.
But the man did not take the money. He stood in a daze. The blow came so swiftly and without any expectation, that he stood with his jaw hanging, and a little blood began to stream out from the corner of his mouth. Suddenly he bent and picked up the shafts of the ricksha, and he said to Yuan simply, “It was a harder blow than any the foreigner gave me.” And so he went away.
But Meng had not stayed a moment after he gave the blow He strode off and Yuan ran after him. When he came up to Meng he was about to ask him why he gave the blow, but first he looked at Meng’s face, and then he kept silent for to his astonishment he saw in the bright light of the streets that tears were running down Meng’s cheeks. Through these tears Meng stared ahead, until at last he muttered furiously, “What is the use of fighting in any cause for people like these, who will not even hate the ones who oppress them, — a little money sets everything right for such as these—” And he left Yuan at that instant and turned without another word into a dark side street.
Then Yuan stood irresolute a moment, questioning if perhaps he should not follow Meng to see he did not do some further angry deed. But he was eager to reach his room, for it was the night of a seventh day, and he could see before him the shape of the letter waiting for him, and so once more he let Meng go his angry way alone.