It was true that he had been arrested in the foreign school as a revolutionist. Soldiers had come in and searched them as they searched all students anywhere they found them. I-wan had been walking alone and as it happened reading a book then very popular among all the students and written by a German named Karl Marx. Since he had always done as he liked, he made no secret of it when the soldiers demanded what he was reading.
“Karl Marx,” he said, scornfully, for what did soldiers know?
But to his amazement they had at once arrested him and dragged him to prison and thrown him into the cell, where he had raged all night long, at first aloud, until the other prisoners had snarled at him to be quiet so they could sleep.
“The son of the great banker Wu could never be a revolutionist,” the jailer now declared.
But I-wan stamped his foot.
“I will certainly see that you lose your job!” he shouted.
The little jailer turned a paler yellow.
“But how shall I explain?” he wailed.
“Say I commanded it,” I-wan said. “Say that I personally am responsible.”
While this was going on the young man came and stood at the door, his square strong face unmoved, but his eyes brilliant and watchful.
“Oh heaven!” the jailer wailed. “Oh mercy!”
But I-wan snatched the keys from his hand and himself opened the gate while the jailer moaned and pulled his own hair.
“You can say you know nothing about it,” I-wan said, and held the door with his body and his foot only wide enough for the young man, who came out at once and stood waiting. Then I-wan locked the gate again and gave the key back to the jailer, and he touched the young man on the arm and they walked away together, while behind them the dirty and cowed faces of the prisoners pressed against the bars.
The two young men did not speak until they had climbed into the old horse carriage which the jailer called.
“I hope, sir,” he begged of I-wan, “that you will remember my plight if I am asked—”
“Let me know,” I-wan said curtly, and gave the horse driver the number of his father’s house.
They were already in the carriage, but at this the young man turned to him.
“You must know I cannot go there.”
“Why not?” I-wan asked.
“I am really a revolutionist,” the young man declared, smiling curiously.
“Are you?” I-wan asked. “But I have always wanted to find one.”
“There are plenty of us in the university,” the young man said lightly. And then before I-wan could stop him, he had leaped from the low slowly-moving carriage. “My name,” he said quickly, “is Liu En-lan, and I thank you for freedom.” He ran then into the crowd before I-wan could lay hold upon him, but he turned once, smiled a wide bright smile, and was gone. There was nothing for I-wan to do but to go home.
When he entered the house he found he had not even been missed. Often he came in late when he went to the theater, which was his usual amusement place since he was especially fond of plays about the heroes of ancient times, such as one found in stories of good robbers, who robbed the rich and gave to the poor. Two or three times a week he went to these plays and came home near dawn and opened the door with his own key.
And in this house everyone slept late. Day after day he rose and ate his breakfast alone and went to school, having seen no one except servants. Now he went upstairs to his own room. It was exactly as it had always been. He went to the bed and tossed it as though he had slept in it. Then he took off his clothes, bathed himself and put on over his white silk undergarments a plain robe of blue silk. He had scarcely done this before there was a cough at the door, it opened, and his mother’s bondmaid, Peony, came in with tea as she did every morning.
“I am late,” she said hurriedly when she saw him already dressed. “I overslept myself.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he replied. “I am not going any more to that foreign school.”
“What now?” she asked, surprised, setting down the tray.
“I am going to the public university,” he announced.
“But that school!” she cried. “Anybody can go to it!”
“Therefore I can go,” he declared.
“Your father won’t let you,” Peony retorted, “nor your grandfather.”
“Then I won’t eat,” I-wan said with energy.
“Which means,” she said mischievously, “I must carry food in here under my coat as I have before when you wanted something. Shame, I-wan! It’s I-ko’s trick!”
They both laughed.
But that was how I-wan came to go to the National University, and how he came to know the revolutionists and to become one of them. For, surely enough, as soon as he stopped eating, his mother flew to his father and his grandmother assailed his grandfather, and within fewer than four days he was wearing a uniform exactly like the one Liu En-lan wore, except that his mother insisted that it be made of the best English broadcloth and cut by his grandfather’s tailor. On this I-wan yielded, since after all it was but a small compromise and it gave his parents and grandparents some feeling of satisfaction in their authority. “At least,” they said, examining the new uniform when he put it on, “it is very becoming to him.”
“Come here,” his grandmother cried, “let me feel your cheeks!”
And still for compromise he bent and let her feel his cheeks with her dry old hands.
“Little meat dumpling!” she murmured.
And he endured this, too, because, after all, he had what he really wanted.
Two years later, in this fifteenth year of the republic, I-wan, without anyone of his family dreaming such a thing could be, had become one of those revolutionists whose secret groups met in every school in China. He lived two wholly separate lives, his old life as the younger son in a rich house, and this other life as a passionate young man among other such young men, dreaming of overthrowing the new republic and setting up a still newer one, since they were as rebellious against the republic as their fathers had been against the throne. Neither life had anything to do with the other. None of his schoolmates had even seen the big square house where he lived, until one day in early autumn, he stopped on his way from school at a sweet-shop near his home. When he came out again someone passed him and called his name. It was Peng Liu, one of the band of revolutionists, and the only one he did not like, though Peng Liu was of no importance. He was the son of a small shopkeeper in the city, a small mean-looking fellow with narrow eyes and a loose mouth through which he perpetually breathed with a foul breath. No one liked him, though these things, after all, he could not help.
“I-wan!” Peng Liu called. “Where are you going?”
“Home,” I-wan replied, and wished he had thought of a lie, because now Peng Liu sauntered along with him and there was nothing to do with him until they reached the big house. He made up his mind, however, that he would not ask Peng Liu to come in. Peng Liu would never understand why, though a revolutionist, he lived in this house, and he would not like him the better for seeing its luxuries. Besides, why was Peng Liu here at all? His home was far away in the Chinese part of the city. Had Peng Liu purposely followed him?
He stopped at the gate and shifted his school books. He looked about him quickly and then he glanced at the windows of the house to see if I-ko might be there watching him. He did not want I-ko to see Peng Liu. He would immediately suspect Peng Liu’s poor garments and meager, sickly face. But there was no one at the windows, and there were few people loitering in the hot sunshine of an early September afternoon in Shanghai. So he said in a low clear voice, “Until tomorrow, comrade!”
“Until tomorrow,” Peng Liu said quickly.
“Coward!” I-wan thought with scorn. “He is afraid to say comrade even when no one is near.”