She had demanded of them, “By whose orders do you forbid me?”
They had answered, “By our Chairman’s orders,” and so she had yielded, though with anger. Who could know how furiously she had reproached the man? Of these things neither spoke.
And there had been the story of how once her anger overcame her and to revenge herself she wrote a letter to the one who had once loved her as his rival, and he came upon her as she wrote and she was afraid and hid the letter. When he commanded her to let him see what she wrote, she refused and then he cried in a terrible voice,
“I do not command you as your husband but as the head of this nation!” and he drew out his sword. Then she held out the letter to him and he read it and threw it back on the table.
“I do not care what you write to that fellow,” he had said, all his anger turned to ice, “but I do care that you refuse to obey me when I speak.”
Time and again, the stories said, when she was too proud to yield to him, she went away and left him and stayed away. There were those who were glad to see her go, because of her power over him. But though his anger could last for many days, and so could hers, the day always came and they knew it must come, that whether the quarrel were healed or not, he would send for her or she would come without his sending and their love and hatred would go on.
For the woman had this hold upon the man, that she held him by body and mind and soul, too, and he had never seen another human being who could hold him by all three. She was beautiful and she was learned and clever and full of guile and wisdom and she knew the world as he could never know it and she had words on her tongue to suit every need. And yet she divined in him his soul, that would not be satisfied unless it, too, were fed. He needed to believe that what he did was great and right because it was also good, and he was one who by his nature was compelled to believe that the self in him must be in the path of Tao. This need she satisfied in him. She could pray with him when he needed to pray, and where else was there a woman like her in the world who could satisfy a man both saint and soldier?
Mayli watched them and felt their power and their attraction that somehow drew her into the circle while it excluded her, for the man and the woman lived alone together wherever they were, and yet all the world drew around them.
And all this was shown in the lightest laughter and the gayest words, in the gravest declaration. Thus the lady told of some small thing a child had said in one of her orphanages. Yesterday a little boy had said, “Must I read, lady?”
“Yes, you must read, because all children must learn to read,” she said.
“But I have no time to read,” he had told her distressfully. “I have to fight the enemy. Please teach me first to shoot a gun, lady.”
And after laughter the lady said gravely,
“They shall all be taught to shoot and read. In this world we have suffered because we have only learned to read and not to shoot.” And then she said yet more gravely: “Some might have led the way in this war to a new world where we could trust them, but now we cannot trust them. They break their promise to us over and over again.”
But the Chairman would not have this return to their quarrel. He rose, having finished his meal, and he took his teabowl in his hand for a last drink of the hot tea before he went away. “I shall not believe that yet,” he said to her. “And because I will still believe in my allies, I am sending my best divisions to Burma. If we can fight side by side and win the campaign and keep the Great Road open, then I shall know you are wrong.”
He nodded his head quickly to Mayli and went away, and so at the table the two women were left alone. For a moment there was silence, as though when he went away energy went with him out of the woman. She sat with her round bare elbow on the table, her long eyes downcast, her mind gone with him. When she lifted her eyes, Mayli saw fear in them.
“I am afraid,” she said, “I am very afraid.”
“Why, lady?” Mayli asked.
“I am afraid of this campaign,” she said. “He is sending our very best, our most highly trained, our seasoned fighters, the ones he ought to keep for our own country I tell him. What if the enemy advances upon us while these divisions are in Burma? He values them so much that it is like sending his sons away from him. And yet he says he must send his best.”
She was speaking in English, as she did when he was not there. “I dread the effect upon him,” she said, “if the campaign should not go well.”
“Why should it not go well?” Mayli asked.
The lady shook her head. Her beautiful face was very sad now. “There are reasons,” she said. “There are reasons. I wish I were a man and could lead the divisions myself, I would see that those reasons would not prevail.” She sighed a great sigh. “I wish that I could know from day to day what happens, so that when the campaign is won — or lost — we might know the truth and be misled no more.”
Mayli’s heart leaped. “Send me,” she said, “in your place. I will go and I will watch and I will tell you faithfully all I see and all that happens.”
The lady lifted her head and fixed her beautiful powerful eyes upon Mayli’s face. “It is too dangerous,” she said. “I must think of your father and your mother.” But she did not move her eyes from Mayli’s face.
“You know that fathers and mothers matter nothing,” Mayli said quietly. “You know that only one thing matters today — that each does his duty. If women can fight in the army beside men, if women can walk thousands of miles beside men, I also can do these things.”
“Yes,” the lady said, “you can. For if I were you, I could. But what will you be? There are no women in these divisions. Do you know medicine?”
“No,” Mayli said. “But I could take care of those who do. Let me be the one who takes care of the women nurses. I will see to their food and their shelter and that what they need is given them and I will stay with them at night and see to their protection in the strange country.”
“Yes,” the lady said again slowly. “You could do that.”
“And wherever I am,” Mayli said quickly, “I will watch everything and tell you all. I will be your eyes and your ears.”
“Yes,” the lady said again, “you could be my eyes and my ears.”
She sat reflecting upon this for moments without speech, and the sunlight coming through the window caught the clear green jade in her ring and made it gleam. It was a fabulous piece of jade and if it had been sold it could have fed all her orphans for many days, and yet it was part of this woman and not to be sold. For here was the woman’s strength, that beauty belonged to her. Any who knew her would have cried out at the selling of any part of her beauty, for there is a beauty more necessary even than the life of another creature. And Mayli seeing such beauty felt her own devotion well up in her like loyalty to heaven itself.
The lady lifted her eyes as though she caught this warmth upon her own heart and she said. “I can trust you and you shall go. Now leave me and I will prepare your way.”
VI
MAYLI DID NOT SEE the two again. She returned to her hotel and, after waiting a day, she received a note written her by the lady, in which she said: “That which we planned is done. You will return to Kunming by a plane ready tonight. I hope your mother looks down and approves.”