Pearl Buck - The Promise

“You bear our honor like a flag,” the Chairman had cried. “Now let the white men see what we Chinese can do. If we acquit ourselves well I do not doubt that they will accept us at last as full allies in this war against the East-Ocean enemies. Where else shall we look for allies against these who would take our country for theirs, except to the men of Ying and Mei? I still put my faith in their victory. Obey that one, therefore, whom I have put over you. Not that you need a white man to be your leader, but he is to stand between you and the men of Ying, who are harsher and less friendly to us. And yet we must all be allies. Show that one what soldiers you are. Our whole people look to you. Men! I command you!”

Behind them as he spoke had stood that lady, and as the Chairman shouted these words she had raised her small clenched fist over her head.

The General remembered her as she stood there, a beautiful creature, but was she too not foreign? Often men had talked among themselves that it was she who kept the Chairman the ally of the white men. For she had spent the years of her childhood abroad and she had been nourished by the earth and wind of a country not her own. It was said she spoke their language better than she did her own. Certainly she spoke her own with a foreign curl to the words — book words, too, she used, long ancient words that came out of classics now dead, and she seemed not to know the sharp new short words of today. But then she lived apart from common folk indeed, being a lady, her ears jeweled and rings upon her hands.

He lifted his head to free himself of all these useless thoughts. He was a soldier and he had a soldier’s duty ahead, clear and simple. He knew his enemy, at least, whether or not he knew his friends. He looked at the watch upon his wrist. By dawn tomorrow they should be over the river and in sight of the white men — if those men were still alive.

… As for Mayli, she was that night entirely sleepless and with more than weariness. The smell of battle was in the air. All knew that tomorrow there would be battle. But for her it was the first. Now for the first time there would be men bleeding and dying and having to be cared for. Could she do her duty? She felt ashamed of all the uselessness of her life until now. She had lived softly and easily, apart from her own people. She had been a child abroad, and there among foreign people she had grown up. Yes, and even now she had not become a part of her own people. They were something of hers — a blood she shared, a nation whose citizen she was, but she was not a part of them as they were a part of one another. She longed at this moment not to be able to speak any other language except the one that her own people spoke. She wished she had not foreign memories.

“If ever I have time,” she thought, “I shall read and read again, but not foreign books this time, and only the books of my own people — the old poetry and the old philosophy. I want to find my roots.”

And then it came to her that perhaps she never would have this time, for she might be killed, and she wept a little, secretly, in the night, putting her hands to her mouth to still herself, for she lay among her women and they could have heard her. As it was, Pansiao did hear her, for this young girl still waited to see where Mayli laid herself down and she came and put her pallet there. She woke and lay still for a moment and then she put out her hand in the darkness and touched Mayli’s cheek and found it wet. So startled was she to find that this one, too, could weep that she burst into her own tears, and then Mayli had to speak sharply to her, knowing that only sharpness could stop a sort of reasonless weeping like this, which might indeed sweep over all the women like a panic.

She sat up at once and took Pansiao by the braid of her hair and shook her a little. “Stop!” she whispered, “stop or I shall punish you like a child!”

And Pansiao did stop, terrified by fierceness in the voice she loved, and then Mayli lay down again cured of her own sadness.

“What is there for me,” she thought, “except the one duty I see clear ahead?”

IN THIS MOOD DID all those men and women rise the next morning long before the dawn broke, and they ate their cold rations and gathered themselves together and began to creep onward. Now the enemy was thick around them and every foot fell softly and not a voice spoke, even though the air hissed and split with the sound of guns not far away. The General had sent down warnings to them that the enemy might be perched like monkeys in the trees above them or hiding like beasts in the jungle, and for this reason he kept as much as he could to open country.

“Let each watch for himself and for all,” were the words he had sent down. “Remember that here we have no friends among man or beast.”

The truth was that none of them felt at ease here in war. They were men and women who could fight forever upon their own earth but they were not used to walking upon the earth of others. Upon their own land strength came up into their bodies, but upon this land they felt no strength coming up. It was an enemy under their feet.

They marched forward to certain battle then with their hearts silent, and because their hearts were silent they were afraid. They had for courage only the commands of those above them, and one of these was an American, and when had they found courage before only in commands laid upon them from above, as though they were hirelings? And the women felt the anxiety of the men and followed in dumb silence and Mayli could not cheer them by anything she did, though with great effort she had coaxed two soldiers to get some wood together and she had made a fire and given them hot tea before they started. But they had given her only wan smiles, and each brooded on some private sorrow that when she was at ease she could forget, but which when other fears pressed, she took out again. Thus Chi-ling remembered her dead children and An-lan her old father, and so it was with each one, and even the few who had no great sorrow felt that this was a dreary day for women, without home or shelter, in a foreign land.

Yet as the day came nearer to sunrise their spirits did lift somewhat, for so far they had gone without attack from the enemy and if they could join their allies before the enemy found them from the sky there was some hope that together they could form their lines anew and find a base for attack instead of the eternal retreat.

As for Sheng, marching steadily with the long steps of a farmer, he was eager to come upon the white men and see what they had for weapons and machines. So long had he fought with nothing but his rifle that it seemed to him if they could have even a few of those war weapons of which the white man had so many, then surely they could use them well and attack instead of retreat. How often had he hoped for a mortar only! But these white men had some tanks and planes even, and surely with these could the tide not be turned?

It was with this hope, therefore, that he paused at the place where the General had told him to wait, and he and his men waited above an hour, while the others gathered, and in talking he could not but show his hope, and his men caught it from him, and grew hopeful, too. They could hear clearly the sound of guns, and they listened. There were no great guns and they wondered at this. Had the white men no great guns?

Then by great luck Charlie Li came limping it. He had been scouting the countryside since three o’clock or so, and though he had a stone bruise in the sole of his foot, he had found exactly where the white men were.

“The enemy attacked them in the night,” he told Sheng, “but the white men are still fighting.”

“Do they have their machines?” Sheng asked eagerly.