Pearl Buck - A House Divided

Therefore he dared not use his money for his pupils. To Mei-ling he wrote of it, and how he wished he could mend the room, and how cold the winter drew down, but he did not know what to do. She answered quickly that one time, “Why do you not take them out of that old useless house into some warm court? If it does not rain or snow, take them out into the sun.”

Yuan, holding her letter in his hand, wondered he had not thought of this, for the winters were dry and there were many sunny days, and after that for many days he taught his pupils in a sunny place he found, where two walls met into a corner between two buildings. If some laughed in passing he let them laugh, for the sun was warm. He could not but love Mei-ling the more because so swiftly she had thought of a small simple thing to do before the new building was made. Then this swiftness taught him something. She always answered him more quickly when he put a question to her of a thing he did not know what to do about, and he grew cunning and poured out all his perplexities. She would not answer if he spoke of love, but she answered eagerly if he spoke of trouble, and soon letters flew back and forth between these two as thick as leaves blown by the autumn winds.

There was another way Yuan found to make blood warm these cold days of coming winter, and it was by labor on the land and by planting the foreign seeds in the land. He must in this school teach many things, for the teachers were not enough for all those young who wanted to learn. Everywhere great new schools were opened to teach every new foreign thing which had not been taught before, and the young crowded into the schools to learn, and there were not to be found teachers enough to teach them all they craved to know in these new days. Since Yuan, therefore, had been to foreign parts, he was given some honor and urged to teach everything he knew, and among the things he taught was the new way of planting and tending of seeds. A piece of land was given him outside the city wall, and near a little hamlet, and thither he led his pupils, forming them like a small army into fours, and he marched through the city streets at their head, but instead of guns he bought hoes for them, and these they carried over their shoulders. The people who passed stared to see them, and many paused in their business to stare and call out in wonder, “What sort of a new thing is this?” And Yuan heard one man shout, a very honest dull fellow who pulled a ricksha, “Well, I see a new thing every day in this city now, but this is the newest thing I ever did see, to go to war with hoes!”

Then Yuan grinned to hear this and he answered, “It is the newest army of the revolution!”

The conceit pleased him, too, as he swung along in the winter sunshine. This was truly a sort of army, the only sort of army he would ever lead, an army of young men who went out to sow seed on the land. As he walked he set his feet down in the old rhythm he learned in his childhood from his father’s armies, although he did not know he did it, and his footsteps rang so loudly and clearly that the ragged marching of his followers began to shape evenly and to his pace. Soon the rhythm of their marching set a rhythm moving in his blood, and when they had passed through the dark old city gate, where the mossy bricks gave echo to their steps, and were come into the country, this rhythm began in Yuan’s mind to shape into short sharp words. For very long this had not happened to him. It was as though he had gone through a confusion and now work made him tranquil again and made his soul come clear and distil itself into a verse. Breathless he waited for the words and as they came he caught them in the old remembered delight of the few days in the earthen house. And they came clear, three living lines, but he lacked the fourth. In sudden uneasy haste, for the road was nearly ended and the land in sight, he tried to force it and then it would not come at all.

Then he had to let it all drop from his mind, for now murmurings and complainings began to break from his followers, and they caught their breath and cried out that he led them too quickly and they could not walk so fast and the hoes were heavy, and they were not used to such labor.

So Yuan must forget his verse and he called heartily to console them, “We are here; there is the land! Rest a little before we begin to hoe.”

And the young men threw themselves down upon a bank by the edge of the field, and it was true the sweat poured down their pale faces and their bodies heaved with their panting. Only the two or three country lads among them were not in such a plight.

Then while they rested Yuan opened up his good foreign seed, and each youth held his two hands cupped and into their hands Yuan poured the full golden grains. This seed seemed very precious to him now. He remembered how he had grown it ten thousand miles away on foreign soil, and he remembered the old white-haired man. He could not but remember also the foreign woman who had put her lips to his. Pouring the grain out steadfastly, that moment came again into his mind. He wished she had not! Yet that moment after all had saved him and sent him on alone until he found Mei-ling. He took up his hoe swiftly and began to swing it up and down into the earth. “See,” he cried to the watching pupils, “so the hoe must be swung! At first it is possible to waste much strength because one does not wield the hoe like this—”

Up and down his hoe swung in the way that old farmer had taught him, its point flashing in the sunlight. One by one the young men rose and tried to swing as he did. But the last and slowest to rise were the two country lads, and they, although they very well knew how to swing their hoes, moved slowly and reluctantly. Then Yuan saw it and he called out sharply, “How is it you will not work?”

At first the lads would not answer, but then one muttered sullenly, “I did not come to school to learn what I have done all my life at home. I came to learn a better way to earn my living.”

Now Yuan grew angry when he heard this, and he answered swiftly, “Yes, and if you know how to do it better you would not need to leave home to find a way to earn more. Better seed and better ways to plant it and greater harvests would have made your life better, too.”

Now there had gathered about Yuan and these pupils of his a handful of farmers from the village, and they stood staring in great wonder to see these young students come out with hoes and seed. At first they were afraid and silent, but soon they began to laugh to see how the young men could not strike their hoes into the soil. When Yuan said these words, they felt at ease and one shouted out, “You are wrong, teacher! However man works himself and whatever seed he sows, the harvests rest with heaven!”

But Yuan somehow could not bear to be contradicted so before his pupils, and so he would not answer this ignorant man. Without seeming to have heard the foolish speech, he showed his pupils how to scatter the seed into the rows, and then how deep to press the soil above the seed, and how to put a sign at the end of each row to show the name of the kind of seed, and when it was planted and by whom.

All these things the farmers watched agape, making merry over such great care, and they laughed freely and cried out, “Did you count each seed, brother?” And they cried, “Have you given each little seed its name, brother, and marked the color of its skin?” And another cried, “My mother! And if we took such care of every little seed, we would not have time to reap more than one harvest in ten years!”

But the young men who followed Yuan were disdainful of these coarse jests, and the two country lads were angriest of all and cried out, “These are foreign seeds and not such common stuff as you plant in your fields!” And the jokes of the farmers made them work with more zeal than their teacher could.