Pearl Buck - The Promise

So they left the Englishman sitting there looking after them and they turned and walked for half a day and came to the encampment where the American was and such troops as he still had left, a motley handful of Chinese and Indians and whatever he could save from the retreats and losses which he had had.

They found him sitting outside his small tent in his shirt and trousers like any common soldier, and his gray hair was streaked with sweat, for the heat never changed night or day in this place, and Charlie went up to him and asked him where the Chinese armies were.

That American was staring at a map and writing on it with a pencil and when he saw the ragged handful of men before him in the uniform of the lost division, he began to swear in his mother tongue in mingled wonder and anger. When he came to what he wanted to ask it was simply this, “Where have you been, you fellows?”

At this Charlie told him straightly and simply how Sheng had led his men to rescue the white men and how the bridge had been cut and there was no retreat and so they had been hewed to pieces except for a few who could escape, but who had escaped except themselves none knew.

The American listened with his blue eyes hard and his head lifted and he said not one word.

So when Charlie saw that nothing was to be said, he asked, “Where are our men?”

“They have gone toward Lashio,” the American said in English, “and I have told your General that it is a fool’s decision to do what he is about to do. He is stringing out his men to an absurd depth on a narrow front. The Japs will get him sure, but he won’t listen to me.”

Now Charlie put this into Chinese for Sheng. The Indian who was with him could only stare, for he knew nothing, but Sheng instantly perceived what the American meant and he knew he was right. Unwillingly he said, “Tell the American I fear he is right, and let us hasten ourselves and tell our General so. It may be it is not yet too late.”

“I can understand you,” the American said.

He cast a hard blue look at Sheng and Sheng caught the look with his own black gaze, and these two liked each other.

“I have seen you before,” the American said.

“Once,” Sheng agreed.

“You’re the Nanking hill man,” the American said next in his rough simple Chinese. “I wish you were the General instead of that other fellow,” he went on. “You have more sense than he has.”

This Sheng would not answer, for he could not allow it that his own officer was less than he was. He only said quietly to Charlie, “Let us go quickly.”

So with their thanks, which the American received without politeness, they hurried on their way.

When they came back to the Englishman they found him lying in a curve of the root of that great banyan tree, sleeping. When he heard what they planned to do, he was very reluctant.

“We ought to get on to India,” he grumbled to Charlie. “That’s the only hope of saving ourselves.”

“India!” Charlie cried aghast, “why, man, do you know that mountains lie between us and India?”

But the Englishman would not change his mind. “If I could get to India, I’d be all right,” he said. “I know people there.”

Nevertheless, since he was helpless in the enemy country, for the Burmese shot an Englishman whenever they saw one, he could do nothing but come with them, since he was afraid to be alone. So he went with them and they went by small paths and avoided villages and towns and when along the country roads they saw someone coming in the distance they went into the fields or into the low jungles that lined the roadways where there were no fields.

Now when they had been traveling thus for some days, they perceived by many signs that they were behind an enemy army of some sort, large or small who could tell, but there were increasing signs that the enemy was ahead of them. Villages were half burned, or where they were whole they flew an enemy flag and the people were excited and triumphant at the defeat of the white men who had ruled them.

When Sheng perceived this he said to Charlie, “If we do not creep around the enemy somehow, the battle will be over by the time we reach our General, and if the American is right we shall be too late.”

THE GENERAL HAD PLACED his units according to his plan. He was silent and stubborn day and night, for he could not forget what the American had said and yet he would not acknowledge that he himself was wrong. With great care he set his men out along the narrow front which he had chosen, and when in the night he grew uneasy, he fortified himself by saying that the American had no right to advise since he had not himself won a single battle. “That American clings to the English, so how can we trust him?” he thought bitterly. “The white men are leagued together against us and they have let us come into this enemy country and they have not taken us as equals. Let them cling together and we will act for ourselves since we are not to be treated as allies.”

Day and night he had such thoughts as this and he strengthened himself with his anger, and he told himself that he and his men could vanquish any attack from the enemy, for had he not fought this same enemy at home and now?

Among the women none knew anything except to do each day’s work as it came, and there was much to do, for the men’s sandals were gone and many marched barefoot and their garments were in rags and they were stung by insects and bitten by scorpions and spiders and by snakes which were everywhere and some were ill of stomach poisonings from bad wells and stagnant jungle water which they drank because they could find nothing else.

But Chung as he worked to heal them was uneasy, for he heard rumors among the men more quickly than the women did. One evening he went to Mayli as she sat sewing a ragged coat of her own, and she still had by her the small sewing bag that Liu Ma had made for her. He sat down near her on the ground and he said in a low voice,

“Should we be attacked, should we be defeated, what plan have you to save yourself and your women?”

Now Mayli had often thought what she would do in such a case for she knew that her women would look to her, and she now said, “We will stay by the armies if we can, but if we cannot we will strike out into the jungle and hide — what else can we do?”

“I want to give you a small gift,” Chung said, and he put his hand into his pocket and took out a little compass. “Take this, so that you will know how to walk west away from the enemy.”

She put out her hand and took it and put it in her pocket. “I thank you for it,” she said, and went on sewing. And he looking at her face thought to himself how changed she was from the beautiful careless impetuous girl she had been when he first saw her. She was lean and hard now as a peasant and her black hair was burned in brown streaks, and her face and arms were brown and her lips were less full and very set and firm and her brows were thoughtful. Her hands were gnarled and the nails broken, for there was nothing she did not do of the hardest sort of labor. Her ways had changed, too. There was no time in these days for coquetry and smiles, and indeed she seldom smiled.

She felt his gaze and looked up, and he caught that straight gaze. But she did not speak nor did he, for what was there to say about today or tomorrow which it would be well to say? He rose and nodded and went away, not knowing that never again would he see this woman whom he had learned to lean upon as he might upon a comrade and a man.

… At dawn the next day, out of the seemingly peaceful countryside, the enemy came down upon them. The first men to rise saw a cloud on the horizon toward the south, but what is a cloud? Here the mornings were often cloudy until the sun rose full, and if a cloud was more yellow than others, in this foreign country nothing was strange.