And what she prattled of was always home and again home. “Do you remember how Jade used to try to teach me to read, Third Brother?” she asked. “I wish I could show her now how many letters I know and read to her out of my little book. I have the book still in my pack.”
“Yes, she does,” Mayli said. “I have seen her reading it sometimes.”
“I learned to read it in the white woman’s school,” Pansiao said, “where I first saw you, Elder Sister,” she said to Mayli. “And the moment I saw you I knew that you—”
She turned to look at her brother with sudden thoughtfulness. “The moment I saw this elder sister I said she would be a good wife for you,” she said.
Sheng laughed aloud. “So have I always said the same thing,” he told Pansiao, “and so I still do say. But can you get her to agree with us?”
Now Pansiao was all eagerness. She took Mayli’s hand and brought it to Sheng’s upon her knees and she put them together under her two little rough hands and held them there.
“Now you t-two,” she said, stammering, “you two — ought you not to agree?”
And as though to humor her Mayli let her hand lie under Sheng’s, and Sheng closed his right hand strongly over her narrow one and held it and above these two clasped hands Pansiao’s hands pressed down, quivering and hot. “Will you not agree with us?” she said pleadingly to Mayli.
“Child,” Mayli said, “is this the time or the hour for such talk? Who can tell what tomorrow will bring to any of us?”
“But that is why we should agree together,” Pansiao said anxiously. “If we were sure of tomorrow — there would be no haste. But when there may be no tomorrow, should we not agree tonight?”
“She is right,” Sheng said in his deep voice.
Then Mayli felt her heart drawn out of her body. Would it not be strength to make her promise to Sheng and so be secure at least in that?
Then as though Heaven would not give her even so much, before she could speak they heard the sound of running footsteps and there was An-lan, pale in the moonlight, gasping with running, and her eyes were staring black in her pale face. She ran to Mayli as though the other two were not there and she shouted as she ran,
“Oh, you are here — Oh, I have searched for you everywhere! Chi-ling — Chi-ling has hung herself upon a tree! She — she is there!” And An-lan pointed to the further side of the encampment.
Mayli leaped to her feet and ran toward the place she pointed and Sheng came behind her. Behind him Pansiao stood still but none thought now of her. They ran to the further edge of the jungle, beyond where the men lay behind the barricade of their vehicles, and there upon a gnarled low tree whose small fan-shaped leaves quivered even in the silent air, they saw Chi-ling, a slender shape hanging loosely from a branch.
Sheng took out his knife and cut the cloth that held her and caught her as she fell and laid her on the ground. It was Chi-ling indeed, and she had torn her girdle in half and made a noose and by it had taken her own life.
But was her life quite gone? Mayli stooped and felt the flesh still warm. “Run,” she bade An-lan. “Run — find Chung!” And she began to chafe Chi-ling’s limp hands and to move her thin arms. In very little time Chung was there, girding himself as he came, for in the heat he had been sleeping nearly naked, and he stooped and felt Chi-ling’s heart. He shook his head — the heart was still and she was dead. They rose and An-lan stood gazing down at her with no tears in her staring eyes, and only grimness on her mouth.
“Did she say nothing to you, An-lan?” Mayli asked gently. “You two were such friends.”
“Nothing,” An-lan said. “We ate our meal together tonight as we always do, she and I, a little apart from the others for the sake of quiet. Then afterwards she did what you told us was to be done for the wounded. She did for hers, and I for mine.”
“I saw her,” Chung said slowly, “not above an hour ago. She came in to tell me that one of the Australians had died. But I had feared he would. There was gangrene in his wound and my sulfa drugs are gone. But she knew that he might not live — besides, he was a stranger to her.”
“She always took every death too hard,” An-lan muttered. “I told her — I said, we shall see many die, and what are we to do if you behave so each time?”
“What did she say?” Mayli asked.
“You know how she never answered anyone,” An-lan said. “She did not answer me. But I was speaking thus even as she went to the young dying man and it must be that when she saw him die, she came here to the jungle and died, too.”
“Let us go and look at that dead man,” Chung said. “It may be she left some sign on him.”
“But we cannot leave her here,” Mayli said quickly. “The jungle beasts would have her — the ants, the wild cats — they say there are tigers here, too.”
Sheng stooped. “I will carry her,” he said, and he lifted Chi-ling’s dead body over his shoulder, and so they went into the encampment. An English guard peered at them.
“Who goes there?” he asked.
“A nurse has killed herself,” Chung said shortly.
“Oh, I say!” the guard murmured. He lowered his gun and put up the mosquito netting that hung from the brim of his hat and stared at Chi-ling. “Why, that girl,” he said aghast, “she passed me not half an hour ago, and I said she had better not go out alone, but she pushed by me, and I let her go — it’s hard to argue with them when they don’t speak English.”
“Put her down,” Chung said to Sheng. “The guard will watch her until we come back.”
So Sheng put Chi-ling down and Mayli stooped and straightened her body on the ground and there she lay peacefully, the white moonlight on her face.
“I’ll watch,” the guard murmured.
They went on silently then to the place where the young man had lain upon a pallet on the ground and there he still was, dead. But there was neither sign nor message there from Chi-ling. Only when they looked closely did they see how ordered was the young man’s body, his hair smoothed, and over the foulness of the gangrene wound in his lower belly there lay a handful of fragrant leaves of some sort.
“She put those leaves there,” An-lan said.
So they stood a moment and then Chung said, “Let us go back and bury her. In this heat it will not do to let her lie. The young man others will bury, but let us bury her for she is ours.”
So they went back, and there beside the road in the edge of the jungle they dug a hole with sticks and a shovel that Sheng found and An-lan and Mayli put green leaves into the hole and they laid Chi-ling among them and then when the earth was covered over her Sheng and Chung together lifted the log of a fallen tree and laid it across the grave to keep the beasts away.
When all was done, Sheng and Mayli looked at each other and Sheng said in his old rough way, “Now I must get back to my men and you back to where your duty is.”
They looked and Pansiao had come up and she was watching them, but silently, her eyes strange and startled. They did not heed her, nor did they heed An-lan who sat on the end of the log, her head in her hands. Chung had gone already.
“Let us meet as often as we can at night,” Sheng said. “Keep watch for me, and I will find you when I am free.”
She nodded, and he went away and when she saw him gone, she went over to An-lan and put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Come,” she said.
And An-lan rose and now Pansiao came near and she was silent and afraid, and Mayli put out her hand and took Pansiao’s, and so in silence the three went into the encampment to sleep, if sleep they could in the few hours until dawn would come again.