Pearl Buck - The Promise

“I say, you’re English,” he said.

That other one put out his hand and smiled eagerly, “Rather,” he said and stopped there.

“How did you happen to meet up with these Chinamen?” the first one asked.

“Quite by accident,” the other one said.

“So did we with these women,” the tall one said. “We were taken prisoner by the Japs but we got away. There were eight of us — the rest weren’t so lucky.”

“I say,” the other one answered, then he went on carefully, “I got lost myself. The retreat was frightful, wasn’t it?”

“Frightful,” the tall one agreed.

Then those Englishmen all came together, shaking hands and murmuring to each other in low voices, and in a moment the two kinds stood separate again, English and Chinese, and all were full of unease, except for Mayli, and she looked first at these and then at those. It was a strange moment, a moment such as does sometimes fall whole and separate out of flowing time, entire in itself, linked neither to past or future. They endured it in uncertain silence. Around them was the brilliant green of this country which was foreign to them all. There were the low hills and under their feet was the dusty road. The sky above their heads was smooth and blue but in the west thunderheads piled themselves slowly higher and more high on the horizon. There was no one in sight in field or on the road, and the air was silent and hot about them. They were for this round separate moment cut off from the whole world, alone and yet apart. The Englishmen stood together, bearded and filthy and in diffident unease. The Chinese stood together in their faded and torn uniforms, barefoot, bareheaded, their faces brown with the sun, their eyes cool, and behind them was the Indian but none heeded him. Mayli stood between them all. Now she looked at the tall Englishman, now she looked at Sheng. Then she spoke to Sheng.

“Shall we go on?” she asked him.

“Go on with them?” he demanded. He drew down his black brows and thrust out his chin at the Englishmen. “No,” he said, “I have had enough.”

“What then?” she asked. “Where shall we go?”

“Where do they go?” he asked still scowling.

She turned to the Englishmen and changed her tongue. “Where do you go?” she asked.

The Englishmen murmured together. She heard the fragments of their words. “We’d better clear out—” “Anywhere back to white men—” “Out of this foul country—”

These were the words Mayli could hear. Then the tall one straightened himself. “Westward,” he said, “to India.”

They turned their eyes westward and there were the thunderheads slowly rising. They were silver-edged against the sun, but on the horizon land they massed black.

“There will be a storm,” she said.

“I daresay,” the Englishman said, “but it won’t be the first we’ve had.”

They hesitated a moment longer. Then the Englishman put his hand into his pocket and took out the compass she had let him carry through the jungle.

“I say, here’s your compass — thanks awfully,” he said.

She was moved for a moment to tell him to keep it. For indeed those Englishmen looked very helpless, standing there closely together. Could they find their way, unguided? But Chung had given her the compass and she did not wish to give it away forever, and so she took it in silence. Then the Englishman shouldered his gun. His face was pale and tired but his eyes were still resolute. “Well,” he said abruptly, “we’d better be moving on.”

He turned sharply as he spoke and strode off and behind him the other Englishmen in their dirty sweat-streaked uniforms fell in smartly and so they marched away down the road. Down the road they marched toward India and the Chinese stood watching while the brave and tattered figures grew small against the thunderous sky and then were lost in the rising darkness.

But here was the strangest instant of this strange moment. That man from India who all through these days had followed silently and faithfully behind Sheng now gathered his thin black body together and he leaped into the air as though his legs were springs of steel and he darted out and made after the Englishmen. This he did without a sound, with no cry or word of farewell. No, he only ran into the darkness after the white men, his bare feet silent as a tiger’s in the dust.

They saw his wild face for one instant, the whites of his great sad eyes, the flash of his white teeth. Then he, too, was gone.

All were too amazed at first to speak, until Sheng said, looking at Charlie, “That man of India — has he still his knife?”

And Charlie said, “You know he lives with it in his hand and he sleeps with it under his pillow.”

“Then the outlook is not good,” Sheng said grimly.

Now as the Chinese stood, a deep stealing wind began to come out of the clouds. It rose steadily with a distant roar and hearing it Mayli was troubled and for the first time she was afraid. She turned to Sheng, “Where shall we go?” she asked. “I am afraid of that storm. It does not look as usual as other storms.”

“It is a huge storm of some sort,” he replied. In anxiety he examined the clouds curling and boiling over the whole western sky. “Certainly we must escape it,” he said soberly.

Now they looked toward the east and they saw the sky there was still clear and blue.

“Let us go home,” Sheng said suddenly.

And Pansiao hearing this word, “home,” cried out, “Oh, I want to go home.”

“Home — home,” the weary women sighed.

But Mayli said sadly, “Between us and home there are hundreds of miles of jungles and mountains and rivers. Can we go so far on foot?”

“I go,” Sheng said sturdily.

He set off at once and Pansiao ran after him and Charlie went after her and one by one the women followed until only Mayli still stood, so weary, she told herself, that she could not put out her foot to take up so long a march. Ahead of them the pure bright sky shone still more clear. But was she not too weary to walk toward it? She longed to sleep until she died.

Ahead of her Sheng stopped and looked back. “Do you come with me?” he shouted.

Yet she hesitated. What if they never reached home?

“Sheng!” she cried. “Will you promise me—”

He cut across her pleading voice with harsh and whiplike words. “I make no promises,” he shouted. “I am not one of those men who make promises!”

She saw him standing tall and straight in the livid light. If she stayed here, if she ran after those Englishmen, would not the storm overtake her? The sunlight still fell upon the land from the clear sky ahead. What could she do except go with Sheng? And promises were nothing but words, and words were bubbles of air, falling easily from men’s lips and broken and gone as though they had never been. She bent her head. No, even though he would not promise—

“I am coming,” she said, and so they began the march home.

… Far away in Ling Tan’s house Jade sat watching her sons play on the threshing floor in front of the door. It was near noon and in a little while the two men, Lao Ta and Lao Er, would come home to their noon meal. They were in the fields, cutting the ripe wheat. It was a heavy harvest and they had twice thinned it secretly, as all the farmers had done in that region under the enemy, so that the enemy inspectors, searching the fields, could not see how good a harvest it was. The secret grain they had threshed by night and it was hidden in the bins in the cave under the kitchen.

Now Jade was sewing on a garment of Lao Er’s and despising the stuff of which it was made as she stitched. The cotton stuffs were all worthless now, for this was all the enemy brought them. Some day, she mused, she would weave once more the old fine strong blue cloth that lasted from father to son, some day when they were free again. Yes, they would be free again, she knew it, she felt it. There was no promise for eye to see nor for ear to hear, and yet men and women, in the midst of present evil, had begun to hope out of their own unyielding hearts. Out of such musing she lifted her head from her sewing and saw the two men coming across the fields, their sickles in their hands. They walked side by side, sturdy and strong.