“Go on,” En-lan commanded her. “Tell all your wickedness!”
“Well, I was cleaning your table drawers one day—” Peony went on very slowly.
“I missed something the other day from that table drawer,” I-wan said, and he began to laugh, too.
“She found my story, that I had written — you remember, I-wan?” En-lan cried. “She stole it and read it — and made up her mind then and there.”
Peony sat down on the edge of a chair. She was biting the edge of her red lip.
“It was my business to keep your table drawers neat, I-wan.” Her eyes were full of demure hidden laughter.
“Oh yes, of course,” I-wan agreed.
They laughed together. It seemed to I-wan he had never had better and more happy laughter. Then suddenly he remembered why he was here at all. He exclaimed to En-lan. “This Chiang who separated us has brought us together again! I am sent with this. You are to give it into the hands of the ones who are with you.”
And he pulled the sealed letter from his inner pocket and gave it to En-lan.
“I have been expecting this — but not you,” En-lan replied. “And I must not delay it. They are waiting for it. But wait for me here.”
He took the letter and went away.
And I-wan, left alone with Peony, looked at her and she looked at him, and then in a moment she began to ask of his parents and his grandparents and he told her and he put in as though it were simply family news that now I-ko was married too, but he did not say to a white woman, for why need he tell that? And still his instinct kept him back from telling about Tama.
She listened to it all and while she listened he saw her face grow more what he remembered it, though still the ten years lay more heavily upon her than they did upon En-lan.
And then in a little while En-lan came back. His whole look was grave and yet alive and he said to Peony, in a solemn voice, “What I said would come to pass has come. Chiang wants union!”
She gave a cry of joy and I-wan saw there was more between these two than love.
“Ai, I told you, Peony, he’s a great man — yes, he’s right!” En-lan said. “Well, now, somehow I have to make my soldiers see it — they won’t want to do it at once. Each of us is to talk to his own division. There’ll have to be a meeting. I’ll make them see it.”
He was looking at Peony, asking for her agreement, for her approval. She nodded.
“Shall I go and tell them to strike the gong for meeting?” she asked.
“Yes, tell them,” En-lan commanded. “No, wait — say in half an hour. I-wan must refresh himself. And I must be alone for a while.”
“He still writes everything down before he speaks it,” Peony explained.
He sat upon the dry baked earth of the drill ground. Beside him sat Peony. And helter-skelter, anyhow, and as they liked, sat men and women, but all young, around them. The hard and brilliant northern sunlight fell upon brown burned faces. It was difficult to know which were men and which women. But all these faces were upturned to hear En-lan, who stood so near that he could put out his hand and touch him. He felt strangely carried back into his boyhood. But then, in those days, En-lan had spoken to twenty or so, and now there were these hundreds. How had he done this? Somehow, while he had been thinking him dead, En-lan had been building this — this country; somehow, in spite of endless fighting he was here, strong and alive, and with him all these. En-lan’s voice, clear and carrying through the still air, was saying:
“You know what we did. Six years ago we declared war upon Japan. They laughed at us. Then three years afterwards we made our Long March. Our feet were torn and we were starved and many of us died. But we knew even then who was the real enemy. Though Chiang Kai-shek had pressed us and driven us backward over thousands of miles, we knew there was an enemy greater than he.” He raised his voice. “Our enemy was Japan, who even then was attacking our people!”
He paused, and a low roar went up from the people. He put up his hand in an old gesture which pulled at I-wan’s heart, he remembered it so well.
“What I tell you, you know. Not many months ago Chiang Kai-shek was kidnaped in Sian. We held him there — in our hand.”
En-lan held out his strong rough hand, cupped.
“We might have closed it — thus.” He closed his hand. “Then Chiang Kai-shek would have been no more. He who fought us so bitterly, for so many years, was here in our hand.” He opened his hand again and stared into it. Over the whole multitude there was not a sound. Breathless they gazed at En-lan. He looked up, over his hand. “There were those of you who said, ‘Kill him — kill him!’ If your leaders had heeded you”—En-lan’s thumb went down—“he would have been dead in an hour. You blamed us then, because we did not move. You blamed us bitterly because he lived and returned safely to his home. Some of you still are angry because today he is still alive.”
He dropped his hands now and held them lightly clasped. It was En-lan’s strength that without movement, merely by the power of his voice and his words, he held men silent and subdued to him. I-wan felt it, all the old power, but infinitely deeper and more perfected.
“But we remembered who the real enemy is. It is not he. We said to you then, ‘If he could so relentlessly pursue us year after year, he can thus pursue our enemy.’ We said to him, ‘Will you fight Japan?’ He said, ‘Until I die.’ So we let him go.”
Now they could feel what was coming. Now they knew this mounting rising terrible power coming out of En-lan meant he would demand sacrifice from them. His eyes began to burn, his voice grew deep, he held himself higher. Their eyes were fixed upon him.
“Today he is the only one who can lead us on to war. There is no other.”
But now they stirred. “You! You! You!” This word began to break from the crowd here and there. But En-lan caught it and tossed it away.
“No, not I! I am a communist. This nation will not follow any communist! And Japan would use us still more as an excuse for war—‘China is communist,’ they say already! No, we must serve our own country, not the enemy.”
They fell silent. What he said was true. What would he say next?
“There is only one who can save us all,” he said. “He who has seemed to be our enemy. If we come under his flag — not he under ours, but we under his — what can our enemies say? Before the whole world we shall be a united people, fighting together!”
I-wan, staring at En-lan, was sobbing within himself. This fellow, this magnificent man — demanding of his people this supreme self-denial — telling them they must subdue themselves now to one who had so persecuted them — who but En-lan could have made so huge a demand!
“Forget yourselves!” he commanded them. “Remember only that you are Chinese!”
Not a sound, not a word! Peony at his side was smoothing with her fingers the dust upon the ground and writing two characters—“China.”
“Those who will, let them raise the right hand!” En-lan commanded.
Up came their right hands — hundreds of hands.
“Those who are not willing!” En-lan demanded again. His blazing eyes dared them.
Not a hand dared. He dropped his head and turned away, and slowly, as though from dreaming, the people began to struggle up, some to walk away, some to stand talking.
But it was over. They had done what En-lan wanted them to do. I-wan saw him stride across the court to his own room. And Peony rose quickly to follow him.
“He is always tired for a little while after such a thing,” she whispered. “Something goes out of him.” She hurried toward the court.
And I-wan, after a moment, went out toward the field, where MacGurk was oiling the plane. The daze of the past hour was still upon him, as bright as a dream. When he stood again before Chiang, he would say, “Let me go back.” Yes, he must come back. Somehow En-lan made this his country, even as he had done in those other days.