And Mayli, left behind, ceased laughing suddenly and sighed, and stood motionless for a long moment, her busy hands resting on the edge of the basket. It was possible that she and Sheng would never meet again.
XX
THAT LAST NIGHT MAYLI wrote a letter to Sheng. She made it short and plain, for she did not know whose eyes would fall upon it, and what she said was this:
“Sheng:
“We leave tomorrow morning at dawn, under orders. The American will tell you where we go, if you cannot find out otherwise. If you can follow, I shall be watching for you day and night and so will your sister. I believe you live. Would I not know it if you were dead?”
When this short letter was written, she sat for a while thinking whether she ought to write to any other. Well she knew that from this campaign which the General planned she might never return. She knew that the General must be obeyed and yet she could not forget the American’s warning, that what the General planned to do was folly, since he had not enough men left to do it. If she were to die in this campaign, for the enemy spared no woman or man, then to whom should she now write?
She thought of her father in America. Surely to him she should write? And yet she could not. He seemed far away, he was ignorant of her life and its necessity, and how could she begin now and explain to him where she was and why? She had been silent so long that now silence could not be broken.
Was there no one to whom she cared to say that this was the last night before a great campaign? And as her mind wandered, she thought of Sheng’s family in the village near Nanking, and she knew that to them she could write. They would know what battle meant and what the enemy was and what the danger would be tomorrow.
So in quick clear characters she wrote one of her letters to Jade and she told that one exactly what was the truth — that Sheng had not returned but she would not think of him as dead and that she went with the others tomorrow to a new camp and battle front. When she had written this she sat pondering if there were anything else she ought to tell. The night around her was very dark, the air thick with heat. She was in her small tent, and the light she wrote by was a paper lantern. Around it a cloud of moths and beetles circled and swarmed and fell bruised upon the paper. She brushed them away with her hand, and then she wrote, “I ought to tell you — our allies have not upheld us here. Do not have great hopes, for we are in retreat. I tell you this — those whom we came to deliver have betrayed us. Tonight is dark — who can see tomorrow? But I send good wishes to you all. If we live, Sheng and I will come home again some day.”
Now this was as near as Mayli had ever come to saying to that family that she and Sheng would one day be wed, and as she wrote the words a deep heat came up out of her heart and made her warm and she said to herself that she would never believe Sheng was dead until she saw his body or his bones. And so she sealed the letters and she mailed the one to Jade, but the one to Sheng she gave to the Burmese woman to give to her husband and she said,
“Tell your husband to look for a tall fellow with frowning eyes and a wounded arm, and give him this letter.”
The Burmese woman, pleased with her child, promised that she would do what Mayli asked in thanks for the healthy son she had. All this was on the last night before the new march began.
… Now that letter which Mayli sent to Jade went by carrier and by plane and by carrier again, and then over the enemy country by the hands of hill men and then by carrier again, until by devious means it came to Ling Tan’s village and was brought to Ling Tan’s house. No one in the village could read outside of Ling Tan’s house, since the old scholar was dead, and so every letter was brought to that house and to Jade. And Jade because of her learning had come to be looked upon as a woman of great wisdom and skill, so that women came to her from a distance and asked her to cure their troubles. Some would ask her how to bear a son and some would ask her why their hens did not lay and some asked how to put down a wen or heal a flux or how to mend a child’s crossed eyes and many other like troubles they brought to her. Such answers as she could get from books she read to them, and then out of her own increasing wisdom she began to devise cures and answers which were so often good that all over the countryside quietly this woman Jade began to be known for her good works.
Even Heaven thought well of her, for Lao Er never looked at any other woman. His whole heart was upon her and her children grew without illness, and when she weaned her twin boys they did not grow thin or fretful and even Ling Sao had to give over her complaints against Jade. More and more she leaned on Jade for the direction of the household, and Jade without worry or talk took upon herself the duties of Ling Tan’s house, and always so gently that no one felt the weight of her tongue or hand. Even Lao Ta’s wife, though she was the elder, allowed the younger to be her guide, and it was now Jade who kept peace between this woman and Ling Sao and it was she who soothed the tempers which Ling Sao let out more easily as she grew older, and she who comforted the other woman’s tearfulness. All Jade did was done so delicately that Lao Ta felt himself always the older brother and Ling Sao had always the place of honor among the women, and as for Ling Tan, he shouted for Jade whenever a fly buzzed near him when he wanted to sleep, or when he wanted hot water to bring the wind of old age up out of his belly, and he thought Jade had nothing to do but serve him.
So this household went on even in such evil times, and Ling Tan and Lao Er spent their time in devising cunning ways to deceive the enemy as to their crops and the number of their fowls and fish, and secretly they ate well enough and outwardly they looked as though they had nothing. That cave under the kitchen they kept as a hiding place for salted fish and dried fowl and ham and salt pork and cabbage and turnips and bins of rice. Thus fed, the children grew so well that Lao Er taught his sons to hide if an enemy came by, lest they look too fat for people who are conquered.
In these years there had been only one real trouble in the house and it was that Lao Ta’s wife for two years had no children. She could never forget that she was older by nearly ten years than Lao Ta, and in her impatience this woman once and twice and three times thought that she was with child and she told it too soon, and then must confess that she was wrong. When this had happened the third time, Ling Sao grew angry and she said,
“Do not tell me that you have a child in you until your belly is big and I can see it for myself.”
At this Lao Ta’s wife began her ready weeping and Ling Sao seeing it went on morosely, “Even then it may be nothing but I have known women who were so full of wind that they deceived all and came to childbirth and they brought out nothing but a bag of wind.”
When at last the woman was truly with child Ling Sao would not believe her until the child was born. Alas that this child was a small and wizened girl, and Ling Sao disliked her at sight, and so here was another trouble in the house. But Jade took that little girl’s part secretly and made such amends as she could for Ling Sao’s hatred of her. The truth was that Ling Sao had always been so full of hearty health and her children so good, that she was ashamed that something of hers should be so small and yellow as this child.
“Eat!” she would cry at her. “Eat!” and when the child cried in fright at her fierceness and could not eat Ling Sao’s heart smote her and still she was more angry, and so this was a trouble in the house. But Jade took the child away into her own room as she grew older and she coaxed her with an egg or a dish of noodles cooked with bean oil or some such dainty and because she smiled and was gentle sometimes the child ate.
And all this time under her calm face and behind her kind eyes Jade kept her own thoughts, sometimes even from Lao Er, her husband. And these thoughts hovered continually about Mayli and Lao San, or Sheng, as she knew he was now called. So she had done since the day now many days ago when Lao Er had told her she must dream no more of leaving this home again and going to free country.