At this the young man pressed his full lips closely together and there was no more talk. Sheng paid his fee and gave the lad some tea money and that one put on his turban again and thrust his red flower behind his ear and Sheng went to see his General.
The General was weary enough but he had taken no time to rest. He had busied himself with his men and with all those who came to report to him as Sheng did, and he sat now in a small room in the inn which he had rented for headquarters, and when he saw Sheng he motioned to him to wait for a moment while he read a letter he held open in his hand. Others were waiting too, but the General paid no heed to any of them while he read. Then he folded the letter and put it into his pocket.
“Which of you is first?” he asked those who waited.
“I will be last, Elder Brother,” Sheng said.
“Sit down, then,” the General told him, and so Sheng sat down and waited while one by one the others asked their questions and made report. In something over an hour it came to Sheng’s turn, and the General, being now very weary, threw himself back in his chair and sighed.
“Close the door,” he told Sheng, “but first send some one for fresh tea. I am thirsty.”
So Sheng called a soldier and the man went away and came back in a moment with a pot of hot tea and then the General poured out two bowls and motioned to Sheng to drink and filled his own bowl twice and drank it down, while Sheng waited for the General to ask him his business. But the General did not ask, even when he had drunk his fill. Instead he unbuttoned the collar of his uniform and he sat there, his face very distraught, and he was silent as though his mind were full of secret troubles. Then he took the letter out of his bosom. “I cannot understand this,” he said to Sheng.
He threw the letter to Sheng and there Sheng saw a letter from the American. It was written in Chinese, not by the American but by some one writing for him, and at his command, and the letter said that the General was to hold all the divisions at the border until further word.
“I cannot understand this,” the General said. “I came here expecting to find my orders to march tomorrow. Instead I find the command to wait until further word. What word — whose word?”
They looked at each other. “I suppose, if I can guess, the word of those above the American,” Sheng said very slowly.
“That,” the General said clearly, “is what I also guess.”
X
WHO CAN KNOW THE hardship of holding in leash angry impatient men when they are eager to be gone and cannot understand why they are held? That night Sheng did not talk long with his General, for he soon found that he knew as much as the General did and neither of them knew anything. He went away troubled and doubtful, and left the General sitting as though he were made of stone.
In the next few days there was scarcely an hour when some of the men did not come to Sheng and ask him when they were to march again. They came courteously making one excuse and another, but the burden of their coming was always the same, “When do we fight?”
What could Sheng say but the truth, that he did not know? His men stared at him and one of the boldest said bluntly, “Why do you not find out, Elder Brother? Ask the General.”
“He does not know,” Sheng said plainly.
The men went away staring and muttering, for these men had not been taught to be silent beasts before their leaders. Each man respected himself and was able to take care of himself in battle, and the price for this sort of soldier is not the same price as the enemy paid for their silent obedient creatures. These men of Sheng’s fought well only when they knew why they fought and where and whom. They talked together and when they thought another way better than the one their leaders chose, they said so, for they were free men and fought as free men.
But, being free, they felt themselves worthy now to be angry and to curse heaven for all this delay, and to cry out against the waiting of their leaders. They were all for sallying into Burma without any foolishness of courtesy or lingering for invitation from the English.
“What cursed this and that keeps us here?” Sheng heard one of his men bawl one day to his fellows, and when they did not know him near. It was noon and the men had eaten their meal and were idling in the sun around their barracks. Some were mending their straw sandals and some were shaving others and some were smoking cigarettes and most were doing nothing. The place was full of noise and laughter and rough voices, but above them all rose this one voice. A murmur began when they saw Sheng, but the young man stood his ground sturdily. Sheng stopped to look at him. He was a heavy-set tall fellow with the burr of the north on his tongue.
“You are not more impatient than I am,” Sheng said quietly.
“I am a small fellow and you are a big one, Elder Brother,” the man replied. “If I were as big as you I would not wait.”
His brown face crinkled with a smile and in his black eyes, sharp and shining, were mingled impatience and laughter.
“I am not big enough to do what I like,” Sheng replied, and went on.
But how could anything quiet the restless young men? They fell into quarrels with each other and with the townsfolk, and looked at women too boldly and broke their vows, and the prostitutes raised their prices, and all complained day and night. None of this was made better by the news leaking in from the south, for there were always those who came in from the south for trade or to escape the war or to travel upon the Big Road, and their words were the same. The foreigners, the Englishmen, were massed along the Salween River, but the enemy had already crossed that river below and had taken the town of Martaban. At Paan the Englishmen still held and fired without mercy upon the enemy ships, but could they go on holding? Did they mean to hold?
Sheng listened to these travelers as gravely as his men did.
“It is not that Martaban is important,” a peddler of small goods said to him one day, from whom he had bought a towel. “But Martaban is a bridge for the enemy coming from Thailand. Over that bridge the two enemy forces can join as one.”
Then Sheng put questions to this man who was a man from India by birth, a man of low caste who because of his many travels had become so mongrel that he took the color of the country where he was. But he was quick and clever, too, and he knew the people everywhere he went.
“Why do the English not let us come in?” Sheng asked frankly of this stranger.
The man leaned forward, his dark hands outspread on his dark bare knees. “The English do not want the people of Burma to see you armed with foreign weapons and fighting under your own leaders,” he said. His face changed and became a quivering mask of hatred. “The English will lose Burma,” he hissed. “The people of Burma will turn against them. It is our chance everywhere to rid ourselves of the English.” Spittle flew in a fine froth from between his clenched teeth and Sheng drew back.
“You are not of Burma,” he said, “why do you hiss and hate like this?”
“If the people of Burma do not hate the English enough then come to India and see how we hate them there!” the man said. His hands were clenching his knees. It was a sight very distasteful to Sheng.
“But the men of Burma do not like the men of India, either, I have heard,” he said. “They wished to be separated from you, too.”
The peddler shrugged his shoulders violently and his dark eyes rolled under their long curly black lashes.
“They remember Saya San,” he declared.
“Saya San?” Sheng inquired, who had never heard this name.
The peddler tossed off Saya San with a flicker of his thumb and forefinger. “He was nothing — nobody,” he declared, “an ignorant man of Tharrawaddy, though he began well enough. He killed an official — well, but his ignorant followers turned against my people somehow and since then — it is all reasonless—”