Pearl Buck - The Promise

And he sat still, not speaking because her words were sweet to him and the tone of her voice warm. How close — how close they were, and could anything part them, even death?

But that moment was only a moment long and it was gone before they could grasp it, and there was Chung at the flap of the tent.

“Now what?” he asked.

“This fellow,” Mayli said. “A nail has poisoned him.”

Chung’s square face was like a death’s head these days it was so thin, and the cords of his neck were like strings that moved his head, and the little belly he used to have in good times was gone now and in its place was a cavern around which he knotted his girdle twice. But he was not ill and he never spoke of weariness. He stared into the hole now cleaned and smelled its taint, and shook his head.

“This man should have the sulfa,” he said, “but I have none. I used the last days ago.”

“Would they have some — the English?” Mayli asked.

“How do I know?” Chung answered. “I have not seen an English doctor these ten days.”

“We can’t keep up with them,” Sheng said wryly. “They are always ahead of us in retreat.”

And now this was the first time that Mayli knew why they had gone back each day. “Is this why each midday we hasten so?” she asked.

“We get our orders each morning to hold,” Sheng said hastily. “We hold at any cost. Then by midday the order comes to straighten out the lines. Then we spend the afternoon retreating to where the line is.”

They looked at each other in deepest gloom.

“But where is the end of this?” Mayli asked.

“Who knows?” Sheng said. “Be sure the General is like a man gone mad. He who has never retreated in his life of war is now pulled back and pulled back, leaving his men dead. We who command under him — what can we do?”

“But the American?” Mayli breathed.

“What can the American do?” Sheng said shortly. “He is no god — he is like us — a foreigner, fighting on foreign soil. No, the battle is lost. We know it. The men smell defeat even in the rear and soldiers are deserting.”

“Our men?” Mayli asked faintly.

“All men—” Sheng said. “Those who have the will to desert are deserting — white, yellow, black—”

All this while he had sat holding his arm stiff, and now the doctor recalled himself, and sighed.

“What to do with you I cannot tell,” he said.

Then Pansiao spoke. She had stood silent while they talked of the war and she had paid no heed to their talk but only to her brother’s arm.

“Do you remember, Third Brother,” she now said, “that our mother used to make a poultice of baked yeast-bread wet and she put it on us when we had boils in the summer and it drew the boils and then they broke and went away? Sometimes she put in yellow rape seed too, but we have no such seed here. But I have a piece of bread in my pack that I have kept a long time against when I might be hungry and every day I have wiped the mold off and while a little is eaten I have saved the rest fearing there would always come another day when I would be more hungry than this one.”

“It can do no harm,” the doctor said, “though perhaps no good. Fetch the bread, child.”

So Pansiao opened her little pack and took out a bundle wrapped in thin brown oiled paper, and this she unwrapped and another paper, and inside was the bread dried and molded in its pores, and she gave it to Chung and then he took the bread and made it into a poultice and wrapped it about Sheng’s arm.

“Do not use your arm at all,” he said.

“Luckily it is not my gun arm,” Sheng said, “and so I can obey you.”

Then he stood up. “I must not stay longer,” he said. “The General has called us to him this midnight.”

He did not put out his hand to touch Mayli, but he gave her a long deep look.

“Better for you if you come back tomorrow and let me look at your arm again,” Chung said.

“If I can, I will,” Sheng said, looking at Mayli still. “But if I do not come for some days, I cannot tell how many, do not think it is because I am ill of the wound. It will be because the General has put a command upon me. When I can come I will.”

This he said to Mayli and she smiled and said with courage, “Be sure I shall not let myself fear anything for you.”

And so they parted yet again.

… Now Sheng when he had left Mayli went his way among the disarray of the retreating army and then he turned to the left and toward a small tent which was the General’s. He coughed at the door to signify his presence and he heard the General’s voice calling him to come in and so he went in.

The others were already there, Yao Yung, his long face sad, sitting on a folding stool, and Pao Chen squatted on his heels. There too was Charlie Li, a ragged pair of trousers held about his waist and torn off at the knees.

“Sit where you can,” the General said shortly. “This is no time to think who is what. I have called you here because Li brings evil news. The rear is already lost. That is, the men know the battle is lost. Supplies are stopped. Where there should be order there is none. If the rear is lost can the front be held? And yet in spite of this tonight I have orders from the American that we are to move quickly to relieve the white men who are in yet another trap. The enemy have beset them once again from the rear. Their armies have crept through the people, disguised and with the help of these people, until they hold the river where the white men must cross it. We are commanded to fight our way through and open up a space on the river enough for these white men to escape. There is a bridge which the enemy hold. We must force the enemy from the banks and hold them to the east of the bridge while the white men cross, then cross ourselves and destroy the bridge before the enemy can follow. It is a piece of work as delicate as an ivory maker’s.”

He said all this in a level cold voice, and when he had finished none spoke for a while, then Sheng asked,

“If it is true that the rear is lost, as Li Kuofan says it is, then what will become of these white men when they have crossed the river?”

“They will continue the retreat,” the General said.

He lifted his haggard face and looked at their faces one by one.

“Let us not deceive ourselves by hope,” he said. “The air support which we thought the white men would send, they cannot send. There will be no help of any kind.”

“Do they leave their own men to die here?” Yao Yung cried out in horror. He was too tender for his task, indeed.

“Those above them count it less waste to let them fight their way out than to send more in to be lost, too,” the General said.

“Then what do we fight for?” Sheng inquired.

“Let each man ask himself,” the General said with gloom. “Meanwhile — here are the orders. Who volunteers?” Now the General remembered that the Chairman had said if there were a task too difficult for any other he should call upon Sheng, and he remembered that Sheng had said, “I will do it,” but he was not willing to command any man to die, and so he waited.

Still there was the silence.

“Will one say he goes, or shall I choose which one must go?” the General asked when at last he saw that none would speak first.

Pao Chen spat into the dust and did not speak. Yao Yung thought of his young wife and little sons and did not speak. Chan Yu did not speak for he knew beforehand that the General would not let him go, for it was his duty to support the General and be always near at hand.

Then Sheng looked around upon them all and he remembered his promise too. So he flung back his head. “Why, since all of you cannot speak,” he cried, “and only I have my voice left, I will speak! I will go, sir, and I and my men will open the path for the white men. But let me know first why they are trapped so that I may feel the task a duty.”