A House Divided (18 page)

And the elder son, whose color was as pale as willow ashes, said anxiously, “For this one foolish boy’s sake we are all in danger, for the soldiers will come and question us and suspect us.”

Then the lady, Yuan’s mother, said quietly, “Let us all think what we must do in such a danger. I must think of Yuan, since he is in my keeping. I have thought of this. He is to go abroad sometime anyway to foreign schools, and I will send him now. As quickly as it can be done and all the papers signed, I will send him, and in foreign parts he will be safe.”

“Then we will all go,” cried the uncle eagerly. “In foreign parts we will all be safe!”

“Father, you cannot,” said Sheng patiently. “The foreigners will not let men of our race on their shores unless it be for study or some such special thing.”

At this the old man swelled himself out and opened up his little eyes and said, “And are they not here upon our shores?”

But the lady said to soothe them all, “It is scarcely useful now to talk of ourselves. We old ones are safe enough. They will not kill such old staid folk as we are for revolutionists and scarcely you, eldest nephew, who have wife and children and are no longer young. But Meng is known and through him Sheng is in danger and so is Yuan, and we must somehow get them from the country to foreign parts.”

So they planned how this could be done, and the lady bethought herself of a foreign friend whom Ai-lan knew, and how through him the many papers to be written and signed and hastened on could be written, and the lady rose and put her hand upon the door to call a servant to go fetch Ai-lan home from a friend’s house where she had gone for a morning’s gaming, for she was not willing to go to school these days of disturbance, because it made her sad, and she could not bear sadness.

Even as the lady put her hand upon the door a mighty noise rose up from the lower rooms, the noise of a bold rough voice shouting, “Is this where one Wang Yuan lives?”

Then they all looked at each other, and the old uncle turned as pale as the fat upon a butchered beef and looked about to hide himself. But the lady’s quick thought was for Yuan first, and then for Sheng.

“You two,” she gasped—“quick—into the little room beneath this roof—”

Now this room had no stairway to it, and its entrance was no more than a square hole let into the ceiling of this very room where they were gathered. But the lady even as she spoke had pulled a table beneath it and dragged at a chair, and Sheng sprang forward, being ever a little more quick than Yuan was, and then Yuan after him.

But none was quick enough. Even as they hastened, the door was flung open as by a gale of wind, and eight or ten soldiers stood there and the captain cried out, looking first at Sheng, “Are you Wang Yuan?”

Now Sheng was very pale, too. He waited for one instant before he answered, as though he took thought for what he should say, and then he answered very low, “No, I am not he.”

Then the man roared out, “Then this other one is he—Aye, I remember now the maid said he was tall and very dark, and his brows were black above his eyes—but his mouth soft and red—it is this one—”

Without one word to deny himself, Yuan let himself be bound, his hands behind his back, and no one could stay the matter. No, although his old uncle wept and trembled and though the lady came up beseeching and said in her grave sure way, “You are mistaken—this lad is no revolutionist. I can swear for him—he is a studious, careful lad—my son—who has never taken any part in all this cause—”

But the men only laughed coarsely, and one great round-faced soldier cried out, “Ah, lady, mothers never know their sons! To know a man one must ask the maid—never his mother—and the maid gave his name and the number of this very house, and told his looks exactly—aye, she knew his looks very well, didn’t she?—I swear she knows his every look!—and she said he was the greatest rebel of them all—yes, she was so bold and angry at first, and then she grew silent for a while, and then she gave his name of her own will, without a moment’s torture for it!”

Then Yuan saw the lady look dazed at this, as at a thing she did not understand at all. He could say nothing. He kept silent but in his heart he thought dully to himself, “And so her love turned into hating! She could not bind me by her love—her hate binds me fast enough!” And thus must he let himself be led away.

Even at that moment Yuan feared with every certainty that he must die. These latter days, though it was never public, yet he knew the end of all such as were known to have been joined to the cause was death, and no proof could be surer than this of his guilt, that the maid herself had given his name. Yet though he told himself so, that word death could not seem real to him. Not even when he was thrust into a prison cell, full of other youths like himself, and not when the guard shouted at him when he stumbled on the threshold because it was so dark, “Aye, pick yourself up now, but tomorrow others must do it for you—” even then he could not understand the meaning of the word. The guard’s words struck into his heart like the bullets waiting in the guns for tomorrow, and yet Yuan could take thought to look through the dimness of that crowded cell, and be eased because he saw none in it but men, and not one woman. He could think, “I can bear to die better than I could bear to see her here and have her know I am to die, and have her know she has me after all.” This thing remained an ease to him.

All had come about so quickly Yuan could not but believe that somehow he would be saved from here. At first he thought that any moment he would be saved. He trusted very much the lady his mother, and the more he thought the more confident he was that she would think how to save him. The first hours he so believed, and the more because he felt, as he looked about upon his fellows, that he was much better than any of them, and they looked poor and less wise than he, and of families of less wealth and influence.

But after a while the darkness fell completely black, and in the black silence they all sat or lay upon the earthen floor. For none spoke, lest out of their own mouths they be committed by some word which might confirm their guilt, and each man feared the other and so long as face could see even the dim shape of face, there was no sound except the movement of a body changing its position, or some such voiceless sound.

Then night fell, when none could see another’s face, and the darkness seemed to shut each into his own cell, and a first voice cried softly, “Uh, my mother—oh, my mother—” and broke into desperate weeping.

This weeping was very hard to bear, for each felt it might be his own self weeping, and a louder voice cried out, very loud and surly, “Be silent! What child is it who cries for its mother? I am a loyal member—I killed my own mother, and my brother killed our father, and we know no parents but the cause—eh, brother?”

And another voice out of the darkness answered, twin to that voice, “Yes, I did it!” And the first voice said, “Are we sorry?” And the second sneered and answered again, “Though I had a score of fathers I would gladly kill them all—” And another cried emboldened, “Aye, those old men and women, they only breed us to make sure they have servants for their old age to keep them warmed and fed—” But the first softest voice moaned on most steadily, “Oh, my mother—oh, my mother—” as though the one who cried these words heard nothing.

But at last as deep night wore on even such cries must be stilled. Yuan had not spoken once while others spoke, but after they were quiet the night stayed on and on forever with its deep exhausted stillness, and he could not bear it. All his hopefulness began to ebb away. He thought the door must open any moment and a voice shout forth, “Let Wang Yuan come—he is freed!”

But no voice called.

At last it seemed to Yuan some sound must be made because he could not bear the stillness. He spent himself in thought. Against his will he thought of all his life and how short it was and he thought, “If I had obeyed my father, I would not now be here—” and yet he could not say, “I wish I had obeyed him.” No, when Yuan thought of it, some stubbornness he had made him say honestly, “Yet I do believe he asked a wrong thing of me—” And again he thought, “If I had forced myself a little and yielded to that maid—” And then again his gorge rose and he thought honestly, “Yet I did not like to do it—” And at last there was nothing else to do than to think ahead to what was to come, since the past was shaped and gone, and he must think of death.

Now did he long for any sound to come out of the darkness, and he longed even to hear that lad calling for his mother. But the cell was still as though it were empty, and yet the darkness was not sleeping. No, it was a living waiting wakeful darkness, full of terror and of silence. He had not been afraid at first. But in the deep night he grew afraid. Death, which had not been real until this hour, now grew real. He wondered, breathless suddenly, if he would be beheaded or if he would be shot. These days the gates of inland cities, he had read, were decorated with the heads of the dead young men and women who had joined the cause, for whom the armies of deliverance had not come swiftly enough, so that before the day of battle they were caught by the rulers. He seemed to see his own head—and then it came to him like comfort, “But here in this foreign sort of city they will doubtless shoot us,” and then he wondered at himself with a bitter sort of mirth, even, that it could matter to him that he could keep his head on his shoulders when he was dead.

Now even as he sat crouched in this agony these hours through, his back thrust between two walls into a corner and his feet dragged close to him, so he sat huddled, the door opened suddenly and a grey beam of early light fell into the cell and showed the prisoners curled among each other like a heap of worms. The light stirred them into moving, but before any could move to rise, a voice roared forth, “Out with you all!”

And soldiers came into the cell, and pushing and prodding with their guns they roused them all, and now roused, that lad began his wailing, “Oh, my mother—oh, my mother—” and would not leave off even when a soldier smote him hard across the head with his gun’s butt, for he moaned these words as though he breathed them and could not help it, and must draw his life in so.

Now as these staggered forth, in silence otherwise than for this one, each knowing what was coming and yet dazed, too, a certain soldier held up a lantern that he had and flashed its light across each face. Yuan was the last of all, and as he came the light flashed across his face. This brightness blinded him suddenly after the long darkness of the night, and in that moment’s blindness he felt himself pushed back into the room, and pushed so hard he fell upon the beaten earth. Then instantly he heard the door lock, and there he was, alone and still alive.

Three times did this thing happen. For during that day the cell was filled again with new young men, and again through that night and two more nights Yuan must hear them, sometimes silent and sometimes cursing and sometimes whimpering and sometimes crying out in their madness. Three dawns came, and thrice he was thrust back into the cell alone and the door locked on him. He was given no food, nor was any moment given him for speech or question.

The first day he could not but have hope. And on the second day he had a lesser hope. But by the third day he was so faint and weak with no food and no water even to drink, that it seemed a little matter to him if he lived or died. That third dawn he could scarcely rise to his feet at all and his tongue was dry and swollen in his mouth. Yet the soldier shouted at him and prodded him and made him rise, and when Yuan clung to the door-frame with his two hands, again the light flashed across his face. But this time he was not thrust into the cell again. Instead, the soldier held him, and when the others were all gone their doomed and certain way, and when at last not even their footsteps could be heard echoing, the soldier led Yuan by another narrower passage to a place where a small barred door was set, and he drew back the bar and without a word thrust Yuan through that door.

Then Yuan found himself upon a small narrow street, such as wind through the inner, more secret parts of any city, and the street was still dim with early dawn and there was no one in sight, and out of his clouded mind Yuan could see this thing clearly, that he was free—somehow he had been freed.

Even as he turned his head this way and that to think how he could run, two came near out of the dusk, and Yuan shrank back against the door again. But one of the two was a child, a tall child, and she came running to him and came near and peered at him, and he saw her two eyes, very large and black and eager, and he heard this child call out in a low fervent voice, “It is he—here he is—here he is—”

Then the other came near, too, and Yuan saw her and knew it was his lady mother. But before he could speak, in spite of all his eagerness to speak and say it was he himself, he felt his body tremble on his feet and seem to melt away, and he suddenly could not see anything and the child’s dark eyes grew larger and blacker and then faded. From some very far distant place he heard a voice whisper, “Oh, my poor son—” and then he fell and heard and saw no more.

When Yuan awoke again he felt himself upon some moving swaying thing. He lay in a bed, but this bed rose and fell beneath him, and opening his eyes he saw he was in a small strange room where he had never been. Someone sat there watching him beneath a light set in the wall, and when Yuan summoned all his strength to look he saw this was Sheng, his cousin. And Sheng was watching Yuan, too, and when he saw Yuan looking he rose and smiled his old smile, but now it seemed to Yuan truly the gentlest sweetest smile a face could have, and he reached to a little table and fetched some hot broth in a bowl there and he said, soothing Yuan, “Your mother said the moment you awoke I was to give you this, and I have been keeping it hot these two hours on a little lamp she gave me—”

He began to feed Yuan as he might feed a child, and like a child Yuan said not a word, he was so weary and so dazed. He drank the broth down, too weak to wonder how he came here and what this place was, and like a child accepting all that was come about. He only felt the warm liquid very succoring and pleasant to his dry and swollen tongue and he swallowed it as best he could. But Sheng talked quietly as he dipped the broth up with the spoon, and he said, “I know you wonder where we are and why we are here. We are on a small ship,—a ship our uncle merchant has used to carry his goods back and forth to the nearest islands, and by his influence we are on it. We are to go across the nearest seas, and stay in the closest port and there we are to wait for papers we must have to go on to foreign parts. You are free, Yuan, but at a mighty price. Your mother and my father and my brother have laid hold on every sum they could and they borrowed much money of our second uncle, and your father was beside himself, and they said he kept groaning how he had been betrayed by a woman, too, and he and his son were done with women this time and forever. And he has given up your marriage, and sent all the money for it and all he could get and all these moneys together bought your freedom and our escape on this ship. High and low money has been paid—”