She was about to weep, but at that moment a servant came out with her arms full of furs.
“Shall we take these, Mistress, or shall we leave them?”
“Surely we will be back by winter — leave them,” Madame Wu said.
“Take them,” Mr. Wu said.
“I haven’t enough boxes,” Madame Wu wailed.
“Buy what you need,” Mr. Wu said.
“Oh — it’s such worry,” Madame Wu said distractedly. She turned back into her room, forgetting everything else.
I-wan turned to his father. “I think I will go to my own room now and refresh myself.”
He wanted suddenly to be alone. His father nodded and he went on to his own door. And I-wan opened the door to the old familiar place.
It seemed at first as though Peony must be there. It had been strange not to see her anywhere about the rooms, and not to see her here was strangest of all. But there was no touch of her, anywhere. The windows stretched tall and bare, and there were no flowers in them. And on his table there was no pot of hot tea. Everything was clean enough, except for a surface of light dust. No one had come here this morning as Peony would have done to make all fresh before his coming. The bed, the books, the cushions on the chairs, everything had the still and unused look of a room long empty. It would be difficult, he felt, to make this room his own again — he had been so young when last he left it. He had thought once that he would leave it to be destroyed in the revolution. But it was still here — perhaps to be destroyed finally by a Japanese bomb! Who knew the end of such things? Not he, at least.
Then he remembered something else. Long ago En-lan had written his own story for him to read, and he had thrust it far into the back of this drawer, behind his copy books. He opened the drawer quickly and thrust in his hand. It was not there now. No one had touched the books or this drawer and it was full of dust. But the sheets of folded paper were gone. Someone had taken them. Was it in that way that they — the band — were discovered? He felt sweat begin to break out on his forehead. Had his father somehow — but his father never came into this room. And Peony only took care of his things. Surely it could not have been Peony — he sat down, feeling a little sick. Surely it could not have been Peony who had betrayed them all — Peony, whom he had told! He could not rid himself of this fear, once it had come to him. It kept him sleepless half the night though he told himself over and over again that whatever had happened was now finished.
In the evening it had rained, and all the way to the ship his mother had kept saying, “I prayed for rain. I paid the gods well for this rain!”
Yes, his father was changed. He had said nothing when she spoke of gods, though once he would have been impatient with her. They had all gone together to the boat and Mr. Wu had given tickets and money to I-ko. The house was very silent when they entered it again, and his father looked too tired to talk.
“We will have a quiet night since the clouds hide the moon,” he told I-wan. “There will be no raids tonight — let us sleep while we can.” He had gone to his room and I-wan to his.
But even after he was in the comfort of his own bed, I-wan had kept thinking of Peony — weighing and questioning what she could have done. If Peony had betrayed them, then he would be guilty of En-lan’s death. And yet even now he could not but trust her, though no one knew her, not even he. But he had not forgotten her. Somehow he had kept her in his memory, though he had not thought of her, either, in all his years with Tama…. Yes, he had thought of her once. On his wedding night he had thought of Peony long enough to be glad that he had never loved her or allowed himself to receive her love. But this he could not tell Tama, and so to Tama he had never even mentioned Peony’s name. And yet Peony was something to him, too — he did not know what — perhaps only the memory of a fragrance and nothing more. Nevertheless she was enough so that he wanted to know that she could not have betrayed En-lan.
At their breakfast he put it to his father, therefore, trying to speak calmly as though it were no great matter:
“I have often wondered how it was you found out about our band, years ago. It is so long gone that now I can ask.”
“Chiang Kai-shek told me,” his father replied.
“Chiang Kai-shek!” I-wan repeated, half stupefied. “How did he know?”
“He knows everything,” his father said drily. “We had had much talk together in private during those days and in return for his promised rule of law and order and expulsion of the communists, I promised loans, as he should need them, of sums we agreed upon. Then one day he sent for me in great urgency. I went and he saw me alone. He showed me your name on a list of communists to be executed. I did not believe it — I swore it was a mistake — and he sent for a classmate of yours who, for a sum of money set as a trap, had given in a list of names — and yours was one.”
“Was he named Peng Liu?” I-wan demanded eagerly.
“I don’t know,” his father said. He looked disgusted as he remembered. “He was a cringing yellow-faced boy who said his father kept a small shop.”
“That was Peng Liu!” I-wan broke in. “So it was he! Where is he now?”
Then it was not Peony! It was not his fault now if En-lan were dead—
“Dead,” his father said calmly. “He was given his money and then executed.”
“But why executed if—” I-wan began.
“Chiang despises traitors,” his father replied.
“How could he offer a bribe and then blame the man who takes it?” I-wan asked indignantly.
“He can,” his father replied. “You have to understand that. He is a hard man, but a true one. He uses everyone, and sweeps away those whom he cannot trust enough to use again.”
“An opportunist!” I-wan retorted.
“All wise men are opportunists,” his father replied. “It is only fools who will not change when times change. But within himself the man never changes.”
His father leaned forward and tapped the table between them with his long fingernails.
“I-wan, I tell you he is the only one who will save us now from the Japanese. I tell you he will do it. He has made up his mind since he came back from Sian, and he will never cease until he has succeeded. See how he has driven back the communists! They are hidden in the farthest corner of the northwest. Year after year he drove them back, determined to bring the country under one rule.”
“His own!” I-wan said scornfully.
“One rule,” his father repeated sternly. “It was far better than to allow such a civil war as would have ruined us and left the country empty for the Japanese to come into and take.”
“Do you mean,” I-wan said slowly, “that as long ago as that — ten years ago — he foresaw this day and began to unite the country for it?”
He had forgotten all about Peony now. He was thinking only of this man whom he had hated with such sobbing passionate bitterness on that day, the man whom he had always in his heart called traitor because he betrayed the revolution. But now, what if indeed he had seen more than any of them?
His father was nodding his head.
“I believe he sees everything,” he said, “and that he can do anything. He is a very great man.”
But he could not somehow so easily accept what his father said. He remembered certain things which he had read in Japanese newspapers.
“His opportunism led him in evil ways sometimes,” he said.
“That was before he was what he is now,” his father retorted. “The test of a man’s greatness is in whether he can see the evil in his own ways and change.”
“He would be really nothing but a warlord in other times,” I-wan broke in. “He has the mind and the ways of a warlord. He always settles everything by force.”