The Patriot (8 page)

“Don’t stay here longer,” he said to them. “Go to your beds.”

“When you speak,” a voice said out of a shadow, “we feel warmer and as though we had eaten something.”

“Good night—good night,” he cried. He could bear no more—his heart was too full, and he turned away.

That night, late as it was, he felt it impossible to go straight from their want to the plenty and waste of his own home. He strode through the cold, half-empty streets of this part of the city toward the school. He would go and talk awhile with En-lan.

He found En-lan alone in his cubicle, not studying, but reading a sheet of closely written writing. When I-wan came in he put this under a book.

“Come in,” he said. “Why are you so gloomy?”

En-lan was never gloomy. His black eyes were bright and he looked as though he could scarcely keep from laughter. Indeed, in these days he made excuse to laugh at anything, as though he were so brimming with inner pleasure that it must overflow.

“I have come back from—” I-wan paused. They never spoke aloud anything that had to do with their work. He sat down on the little iron cot and reaching for a bit of paper on the table, he wrote, “When do you think the day will really come?”

“Not later than the end of the third month of the new year,” En-lan wrote in answer. Then he took the paper and lit a match and burned it to ash and blew the ash away.

“It is moonlight—will you walk?” I-wan asked. He craved from En-lan some of his brimming sureness, and some, too, of his hardness. En-lan was hard and sure and never moved by anything. Now he nodded, rose, and put on his coat and cap of rabbit’s fur, such as the northern peasants wore. Then he took up the paper he had put under the book and folding it away from I-wan’s eyes, he burned it, also, and blew away the ash. Then they went out into the street.

“Let us turn this way, out of the wind,” En-lan suggested. “On a night like this the wind snatches one’s words and carries them to other ears.”

They turned down a quiet alley where they had talked before and squatted in the lee of a wall. I-wan began at once. There was that about En-lan which sifted out extra talk before it was spoken.

“How shall I persuade my men they are worth anything?” he asked. “All my life I have lived among people who thought they were valuable and should have everything.” He paused and thought of I-ko. I-ko had never in all his life been worth anything. He had done nothing except consume food and goods, and yet I-ko thought he must have the best. “These poor,” I-wan went on, “believe somehow that they deserve to be poor. I can’t get them to see that they have any right to live. I can’t get them even to hate the rich. They simply say, ‘One is rich and one is poor—it is fate.’”

He waited to hear En-lan’s laughter. But En-lan did not laugh. His face looked stern in the moonlight and his voice was grave when he spoke.

“You have hit on the kernel of the matter. Our real difficulty is not with the rich. They can be killed and their riches taken from them. The trouble is with those who have been born in such poverty that they cannot hope. They will have to have something in their hands—food—money—something to feel and know they have, before they will believe.” He paused and then went on. “You are an idealist, I-wan, and that is your weakness. The poor are no better than the rich.”

I-wan looked at him. What was this En-lan had said?

“Then why do we work for them?” he asked.

Now En-lan laughed.

“Do you believe that if any of those poor were in your father’s house he would share what he had with the others? No!” En-lan shook back his rough hair. “They would be worse than your father, because your father has never had to be an animal. I-wan, prepare yourself!”

“For what?” I-wan asked.

“For the time when the poor get what they have never had,” En-lan said in a whisper.

“Why?” I-wan whispered.

“It will be worse than wild beasts,” En-lan said. “On the day when we tell them the city is theirs, they will kill not only the rich but each other. Much of what they take will be destroyed simply in the struggle to possess it. We must let them alone. It will pass.”

“And then?” I-wan asked.

“When it is over and they are bewildered because nothing is left, then we must come in and force them to obedience and order.”

“Force them?” I-wan asked. “I thought everybody was to be free.”

“Free!” En-lan echoed harshly. “Such freedom is foolishness. No one is free. We are not free, you and I. We work in a planned system. So will they. There is one man—”

“Who?” I-wan asked. As far as this they had never gone.

“One,” En-lan replied, “one man, a great man.”

“Who?” I-wan asked.

En-lan leaned to I-wan. Against his cheek I-wan felt En-lan’s fresh hot breath.

“Chiang Kai-shek,” he said.

It was the name of the head of the revolutionary army.

“When he comes into this city,” En-lan’s breath was swift against I-wan’s ear—“it will be the day. The plans are made. In twenty days the general strike is to be declared. It will give the workers time to meet and to complete the final organization. They will fight from within while he attacks from without. It was written on that paper I burned—secret orders. All that we have been working for is coming together now—the end for which all has been planned—a new country—our country!”

They sat shivering a little from the cold night and their own heat within. The moon was setting and the walls threw black shadows over the alley so that they sat in darkness. But it was nothing—this present darkness. They did not see it. They were gazing into the brightness of what was to come, into that day when all that was now wrong should be made right. I-wan could see it all—the victorious army of the good. It was now gathered, already waiting.

He had seen a picture of Chiang Kai-shek in his plain revolutionary uniform. At the time he had thought, “He looks a little like En-lan.” There was the same bold clear look in his eyes that En-lan had, the same strong peasant face. Now as he thought, his wandering idealism gathered about this figure. A man like that, so young and strong and full of noble power, leading the army of the young and strong…. He drew in his breath and was choked by something—tears or laughter. He stood up abruptly.

“I am glad you told me that,” he said. “I shall work harder now. We will be ready.”

En-lan did not answer. He rose and they walked hand in hand down the alley.

“How soft your hand is!” En-lan said curiously. “You’ve never done any work, have you?”

“No,” I-wan answered. He was ashamed, feeling En-lan’s hard hand in his, and after a moment he pulled his away. “But I’m strong enough,” he added.

At the school gate he left En-lan and turned homeward. It was strange how heavy-hearted he had gone to En-lan and how light his heart now was. En-lan could always do that for him. The trouble with him, he thought, was that he let himself be lost in the present moment, and En-lan never did. To En-lan a moment was but a moment, and only the future was real. En-lan opened the doors of the present and showed him what was ahead and what they were working for together. He could think now of those creatures blown in the cold wind and feel pity for them and not agony.

“Poor things,” he thought. “I am glad they will have their freedom for a while, at least, to take what they like.”

He let himself in at the garden gate and entered the house and went upstairs. It would be strange when these sumptuous rooms were full of the poor, tearing at the curtains, dragging the rugs away, snatching and pulling. Would he mind?

“No,” he told himself stoutly. “Why should I? I have never cared for such things.”

And then he heard someone weeping. He listened. It was I-ko, crying like a boy. There was a light shining through the transom of his grandfather’s door. Before he could wonder, he saw the door of his own room open, and Peony came out silently.

“I have been waiting for you,” she said in a low voice. “You are to go at once to your grandfather. I-ko has done something wicked.”

It was like coming into a cage again to enter this room of his grandfather. It was hot and close. They were all there except his grandmother. His mother was weeping softly, her round face swollen and her cheeks trembling. His grandfather sat erect in his large chair, holding one of the cigars he loved between his thumb and finger. But he was not smoking. I-ko was standing by the table, leaning on his hands, his neck bent, his head hanging. Before I-wan opened the door he had heard his father shouting. But when he came in the voice stopped. They all looked at him except I-ko, who did not move. But his father began again at once, as soon as he saw I-wan.

“It’s you—you, too—where have you been? It’s long past midnight. But I don’t know why I expect better of my younger son than of my elder! Where have you been?”

“To see a schoolmate,” I-wan answered. He could see I-ko. Now that his father’s attention was not on him, I-ko took his handkerchief and wiped his eyes and blew his nose. I-wan felt in the midst of his disgust a sort of pity for his elder brother. It was horrible that a young man should be so weak and whimpering. Somehow I-ko had been made into a useless being, but it was not altogether I-ko’s fault. He would keep his father’s attention a little longer to help I-ko.

“The moon is so bright,” he said. “My friend left his room in the dormitory with me and we went out into the street.”

“Don’t tell me you ended at that!” his father shouted.

“We talked awhile and then he went back and I came home,” I-wan said quietly.

“I think you ought to believe I-wan,” his mother said in her sudden hurried way. “You should believe I-wan, because he is a good boy.”

“You always say your sons are good,” his father now shouted at her. “Two months ago I thought something was wrong in the bank. But no, you said, I-ko is so good—I-ko could do no wrong! And so everybody knew but I—I have been made into a fool by my own son!”

He had mimicked his wife’s high soft voice, and she began to cry, and I-ko hung his head again.

“I-ko,” his grandfather commanded him, “sit down!”

I-ko sat down by the table, without looking up.

“Do you know what you have done?” his grandfather inquired. “It seems to me you do not.”

“I don’t think it’s so bad,” I-ko said in a sullen half-whisper.

His father started. “You don’t—” he began.

“Be quiet,” the old man commanded. “I am speaking. I-ko, you have taken a great deal of money that was not yours.”

I-ko did not answer at once. Then he said in the same sullen voice, “It’s not as if my father were not the president of the bank.”

I-wan saw his father set his lips without speaking.

The old man put his hand to his head.

“Do you know whose money is in the bank?” the old man inquired. “It is the money of other people—of many people. There is even government money there. People trust your father. They trusted his son.”

The room was quiet except for the old man’s stern voice.

I-wan thought, “I-ko has done this!”

“Why did you do it, I-ko?” he blurted out. “You always have money.”

He saw I-ko’s eyes steal toward him hostilely, but I-ko did not answer.

“Why did you do it?” his father suddenly bellowed at him. “We have all asked you, and I-wan asks you, too. Have I ever denied you anything? You had only to come and ask me!”

“I didn’t want to ask you,” I-ko answered, goaded.

There was silence to this. They all looked at him. He looked from one to the other of them.

“I—I—” he began. He stopped, then rushed on: “Why do you all look at me so? I—I—I didn’t take it all at once—for any one thing. Tse-li said, ‘Let’s do this—or this’—some little thing—I don’t know—and he hadn’t the money, so he said, ‘I-ko, you always have plenty of cash.’ And they all got to saying that—and I was ashamed to say I hadn’t plenty—” He was half crying again. His smooth hair was falling over his face. He turned on his father. “You—you say, why don’t I ask you—it’s because you scold me—you’re always scolding me—ever since I can remember. I—I’d rather take the money than have to ask you and have you—you yell at me, ‘Again—again!’”

“It’s true,” his mother cried at her husband. “You have always been so harsh to him!”

“And who was to save him otherwise in this house?” his father shouted at her. “A lot of women spoiling him, teaching him to cheat, to lie, by pretending to obey me when I am here! You are to blame—women like you are to blame for all the corruption in the country! Do you think I don’t know? I was a rich man’s son, too—in a house full of women and slaves!”

I-wan said not one word. He had his life elsewhere now, and though this house fell to pieces, he would not fall with it. But when his father said what he did to his mother, he thought with a sort of curiosity of him as a man, to wonder why he was not spoiled, then, as I-ko was. Something had come to save his father just as he himself had been saved by happening upon certain books and then upon En-lan and the band and the men in the mill, and through all of these upon the whole age of revolution which was to come. In a sense the revolution had already saved him.

“What can I do with you, I-ko?” his father asked. His voice changed to sadness. “What can any man do with a worthless son?”

His grandfather spoke.

“Nevertheless he is your son and my grandson, whatever he does. We must return the money. And let us send him abroad to some school where he must work and where he can leave these idle companions.”

I-ko did not speak. But I-wan could see he was waiting to hear what his father said.

“That is the best thing to do,” his mother said in her soft eager way. “No one will know—and so many young men go abroad to study now. It is exactly the thing.”

“Cover it all up—cover it all up,” his father said bitterly. “That is the way—no one need know, and so he will never learn the difference between evil and good!”

“I will never do it again,” I-ko said in a whisper. “I have learned. I will do whatever you say.”

His father rose suddenly.

“Get out of my sight,” he said to I-ko, not loudly, but his voice low and cold. “Put your things together. You will go to Germany—go to a military school and let them see what they can do with you. I will have your ticket bought, or you will spend the money.”