Nevertheless the next day, so that he might not bear the weight of the chance, he took advantage of a moment after a class when they copied an assignment together from a bulletin board, to tell En-lan what Peony had said.
En-lan listened and went on copying as though he did not hear.
“At least she is not stupid,” he said. Then he smiled, “I have never seen the inside of a rich man’s house. And after the revolution there will be no more of them to see.” He went on copying. “So, I will meet you at the gate at four o’clock. As she says, there is nothing remarkable in going to visit a schoolmate. That was clever of a slave to say.” He closed his book. “There, I am finished!” and went down the hall.
All day I-wan was uncomfortable. And now, when they came to his home, he was very uncomfortable. En-lan’s bright dark eyes were looking at everything quietly and fully. He had put on a clean school uniform and he had smoothed his hair and thrust a blue cotton handkerchief in his pocket. The uniform had shrunk a little and left his strong wrists bare and two buttons across his chest would not fasten so that his blue shirt showed. But it also was clean. Inside the door he paused and looked down at the thick red carpet.
“Am I to step on this?” he asked.
I-wan laughed. “It is foolish, but so you can,” he replied. He felt nervous and afraid of what En-lan would think of everything.
“If I had it I would sleep under it,” En-lan said. Nevertheless he stepped upon the carpet.
I-wan had told Peony that morning, “If I bring him home today, you are to manage so my grandmother does not make me come into her room.”
Peony had managed, for no sound came from his grandmother’s room. She was sleeping, doubtless, under her opium. He could smell it. En-lan sniffed.
“That here!” he remarked amiably. “I used to smell it in my village.”
“Did they use it there, too?” I-wan asked, surprised. He thought, somehow, that farmers only sold this opium for food.
“Didn’t I tell you rich and poor were alike?” En-lan said calmly.
They were going upstairs now. I-wan had told Peony, “If I bring him home today, manage it so I need not go to my grandfather’s room or my parents’—”
No one called and he led the way straight to his own room and En-lan followed.
“Now!” I-wan said, shutting the door. “Here we are free. You can say anything you like. The servants never come here unless I ring for them. And Peony will bring us tea herself in a little while.” He spoke quickly because he felt so ill at ease with En-lan here. He was ashamed of all that he had.
En-lan did not answer. He stood on the edge of bare floor, looking around the room.
“This is the place you come from every day!” he exclaimed.
I-wan could not bear the amazement in his face.
“I am used to it — I never think of it,” he stammered.
“My father’s whole house could go in this room,” En-lan said. Then he stepped to the carpet. “I should always feel it was wrong to walk on this,” he said. He stared down at the heavy fabric, blue and velvet beneath his feet. “How much does this cost?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I-wan muttered. “I didn’t buy it — it’s been here always.
He turned away and took off his coat and cap. But En-lan kept staring about him.
“Is that your bed?” he asked.
“Yes,” I-wan said.
“I never saw such a bed,” En-lan whispered. “I never saw anything like this — all that silk stuff — what is it for?”
“Curtains,” I-wan said shortly. Then he cried, “I can’t help it! I was born into this house. I don’t know anything else.”
En-lan sat down on a small chair and put his hands on his knees.
“I’m not blaming you,” he said slowly. “I am asking myself — if I had been born into this — would I ever have run away and joined the revolution? I don’t know. I can’t imagine any life except my own — having to work bitterly hard and not having enough to eat. If I’d been you — I don’t know.” He looked at I-wan. “I-wan, I think more of you than before.”
“Oh, no,” I-wan said, abashed. “It’s — I’m used to this — your life seems more interesting to me than this—”
“You have by birth what we are fighting for,” En-lan said. “Why, then, do you fight?”
I-wan had never thought of this before. Did he have everything? Why was he fighting, indeed?
“You have everything—” En-lan repeated, “everything!”
“I feel uncomfortable,” I-wan said. “I can’t tell you how I feel. When I am with my brigade I wish I could bring them here. But I don’t think they would like it here, either. Do you like it, En-lan?”
They looked around the room. For the first time I-wan saw it as a kind of life, and not a place in which to sleep and work.
“I don’t know,” En-lan said slowly. “It’s beautiful, but I don’t know. This thing soft under my feet all the time — it feels wrong. But then, I’m not born to it.”
“Do you wish you were?” I-wan pressed him.
En-lan did not answer for a moment. Then he shook his head.
“No,” he said firmly. “No. I am glad I was born as I was. What would I do here? I like to take off my coat and to spit on the floor.”
It was like a door shut in I-wan’s face. He felt suddenly cut off somehow from En-lan and from all for whom En-lan stood. He felt as a child feels shut into a garden alone when outside in the dusty open street other children are shouting and screaming in living play. But before he could speak the door opened and Peony came in with a tray of steaming bowls. She did not look up. She went to the table, and cleaning one end of it of books and papers, she set out bowls and chopsticks and between them a dish of small pork dumplings and another of balls of rice flour in a syrup of brown sugar.
“I thought you and your friend might like these,” she said in a quiet voice.
I-wan had not expected this of her, and he said gratefully, “Thank you, Peony.” Then turning to En-lan he said, “This is Peony, of whom I told you.” And to Peony he said, “This is En-lan.”
They looked at each other. Then En-lan rose to his feet and stood, twisting his cap round and round, and suddenly Peony said to him, her voice very silvery and cool, “You need not rise to me. I am not one of the family. I am only a bondmaid.”
“As for that,” En-lan said, “I am only a peasant’s son. I have never even been in a house like this before.”
They looked at each other and I-wan felt himself more than ever the lonely child shut into the garden.
“You thought I might tell on you,” Peony said, slowly, “but I will never tell.”
And En-lan answered, his voice as low and slow as hers, “I don’t know why I thought you might tell — except I didn’t know you.”
Then Peony recalled herself. She looked away from him and she said to I-wan in her usual voice, “I-wan, you must eat while the dishes are hot. Sit down, both of you.”
“But,” En-lan said merrily, “why not the three of us?”
Now in all the years Peony had been in the house she had never eaten with I-wan. He had never thought of such a thing, and it was a surprise to him now, and Peony saw it was. She said quickly, “Oh, I am used to serving and not sitting.”
“I won’t sit down,” En-lan argued warmly, “unless we sit down together. In the revolution there is no such thing as one to be served and the other to serve, eh, I-wan? We are all equal!”
A light came into I-wan’s mind. How had he not thought of this before? He had been dreaming of revolution outside and he had not known how to make it come here in his own room. He forced away a foolish shyness he suddenly felt toward Peony.