Now they were alone with him and I-wan lifted his eyes to him to inquire of him what he wanted.
“I have sent for you for two reasons,” Chiang Kai-shek said without any “greeting or beginning. “The first reason is to tell you of the death of your elder brother.”
This he said in an even strong voice and when he had said it, he waited a moment for I-wan to comprehend it…. He could not comprehend it, indeed. I-ko dead! He felt his blood leave his head and then rush back into it, burning hot. He looked at his father. But he was sitting there in his seat, his head drooped and his eyes looking downward.
“You knew this, Father?” he said in a thick voice.
His father nodded. “Yesterday,” he whispered.
“You will want to know how he died,” Chiang Kai-shek said abruptly. He took up a letter from the desk and gave it to I-wan. It was badly written upon a dirty piece of paper, and it was in penciled English. There was no name upon it but what it said was plain enough. It gave a list of names of men, five men, who had been seen in secret meeting with certain of the enemy. And I-ko’s name was third.
I-wan looked up to Chiang’s eyes again.
“But why should my brother—” he was not able to go beyond this.
“There was a plot,” Chiang said harshly, and yet no more harshly than he said anything, “and the enemy promised your brother a high place in the government they will set up.” He nodded toward the letter, which I-wan put back upon the desk before him. “I had that by messenger fourteen days ago. It was not the first news I had had. But I sent for this man who did not write his name here, but who gave it by mouth to the man who, on foot and by any way he could, came to me with it. I sent for him. When he came he said his name was Lim and that he knew you and your brother. He hated your brother for some cause or other.” Chiang paused. “Well, I use men’s hate.” He paused again, and then went on. “This gave me proof that your brother was a traitor. I ordered him executed with the others.”
These words I-wan listened to one by one, knowing the end while he listened, and fearing it, too. But he sat on, looking at Chiang’s face.
“How could that — how could that — that man—” he began to stammer in a hoarse voice. It seemed horrible to him that Jackie Lim, to whom he had been kind, should be the one to spy out I-ko.
But Chiang said quickly, “Do not blame him. He is an honest man. But he is very simple. It made him angry to hear what was gossiped everywhere among the common soldiers, that some of their officers took bribes, and, being simple, when he heard it he examined into it and he was brave enough to report it to me direct. He has lived in America where, he said, men do not fear those who rule them.”
“Where is he now?” I-wan demanded.
“I sent him back to fight,” Chiang replied. “I don’t know what became of him.”
There was nothing then to be said. His father sat without moving. I-wan breathed one deep breath and straightened his shoulders. He tried not to see all the pictures of I-ko that his memory now brought before his eyes — I-ko playing with him in the garden when they were very small and he thought his elder brother beautiful and strong, I-ko willful at being denied something and flinging himself to the ground to weep and kick his legs, I-ko a handsome young man…. How did I-ko meet his death? Was he brave and silent, or was the spoiled child the real I-ko to the last? Impossible to know — he did not want to know.
“It was his foreign wife — I shall send her back to her own country,” his father now said slowly. “It was she who was always making him despise his own people. From the very first moment she came, nothing was good enough for her. She did not like the food or the way we lived. Nothing we have was so good as what she had in her own country. And she laughed at our soldiers and she always said to I-ko that the Japanese were better, until he began to believe there was no use trying to fight them. So — I suppose”—his father’s voice dropped—“he thought since Canton was doomed to fall, he might as well—” He looked up at Chiang haggardly. “I don’t defend him,” he said in a whisper.
Chiang had let him speak on, and while he spoke his grave face took on a sort of stern kindness. Now he said, “We have understood each other.”
I-wan saw his father nod. And at that moment he knew he loved his father as he never had before….
“Go out now,” Chiang was saying to his father. “Rest yourself a little while. I want to talk to your son.”
His father rose and bowed, and they waited while he went out. Then when they were alone suddenly Chiang changed. All the mildness in his face was gone. He turned on I-wan his full stern black gaze.
“You I have used,” he said. “I had planned to use you again.” He paused. “But you are married to a Japanese,” he added sharply.
I-wan jumped a little in spite of himself. This man knew everything. But he was ready.
“Yes, I am,” he answered.
“If you are your father’s son, you are also brother to a traitor,” Chiang said. His voice was harsh enough now and there was not a hint of kindness in his face. “How do I know what you are?”
“There is no way for me to tell you,” I-wan retorted. He could be afraid of this man, but he would not be.
“Will you give up your Japanese wife?” Chiang demanded.
“At your command?” I-wan asked.
Chiang did not answer, but he did not move his eyes from I-wan’s face.
“No,” I-wan said quietly. And then after a moment he said, “I left my wife and my children to come back and fight. I am fighting. When peace comes, I shall bring them here. My sons are Chinese. And — she — their mother — is loyal to me.”
“It will be a long time before peace comes,” Chiang said.
“I know that,” I-wan said.
“This city will be in ruins, too,” Chiang said. He looked about the room and then out of the window, where roof touched roof in the crowded city. “This city and many others, perhaps. When peace comes there may be no cities left.”
“There will be land,” I-wan replied…. Now he understood why his father had said, ‘The lands will be yours and your sons’.”
“Yes, there will be land,” Chiang repeated. And then with one of those vivid changes which I-wan had now learned to expect of him, he said, “What sort of woman is your wife?”
For answer I-wan took from his pocket Tama’s last two letters, which he had not destroyed because they had come just before he left and he wanted to read them again. He opened them and spread them before Chiang.
They were simple letters, written in Tama’s fine clear handwriting. She had not returned to her father’s house because when I-wan was gone she found she could not. So now these letters were full of small things such as how a certain tree had grown in the garden and how the chrysanthemums they had planted together were in bloom again and how a storm from the sea had torn the paper in the lattice to the west, and she and Jiro had mended it, and how big the boys grew and how she told them their father was a hero and that he fought for his country, which was theirs too, and that he must think of them as waiting for the future when they would all be united again. They were, indeed, nothing but the letters which any wife would write to her husband whom she loved and who was at the front in any war.
He watched Chiang’s face while he read them. But he could tell nothing from it, and he waited while Chiang folded the letters and put them into the envelopes, slowly as though he were thinking of something. Then he handed them back to I-wan.
“And now — is there anything you wish?” he demanded.
“Only to have a few days with my father,” I-wan replied quickly. “We will visit our ancestral lands together, which we have never seen.”