“Go on,” he said, when Yul-han paused.
“Look at my town,” Yul-han said. “Say there are some eight or nine thousand people there, such a town for example as Syunchun. Half of the people there are Christian. The church and the mission school are the largest buildings and the best. A thousand, two thousand people, go to church and to your other meetings. In the surrounding villages there are many Christians, too. What do the Japanese rulers think when they see the vast crowds of Christians and these meetings in which they themselves have no part? They smell rebellion and revolution and so they send their spies to the meetings to listen and to report. These spies hear your Christians singing ‘Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war.’ What was that song you bade them sing in the church this morning? ‘Stand up, stand up for Jesus, ye soldiers of the Cross.’ And what did you preach, you American soldier of the Cross? You told us the story of a young man named David, who with a small sling and a few pebbles killed the powerful evil giant, Goliath. And how was it that David could kill the giant and whence had he his power? Weak as he was, young as he was, his heart was pure, his cause was just, and so with God’s help he prevailed. This is what you teach us. And we, hopeless as we are, crushed and lost, how can we but believe you, since we have nothing else in which to believe, our past useless, our future hopeless?”
Here Yul-han stopped, moved by his own words. He struggled against secret tears, his head downcast. When he conquered himself and lifted his head again he saw across the table the missionary gazing at him and in his strange blue eyes was a burning demand.
“Will you be one of us?”
“Yes,” Yul-han said. “I will be a Christian.”
Sunia woke in the night. Someone was creeping along the narrow porch, feeling the latches of the paper-latticed doors. She was suddenly tense, listening. Yes, someone was there. She must wake Il-han. Then she hesitated. He needed sleep, for he had been sleepless for several nights, fearful lest Japanese gendarmes appear at the gate, demanding to know why he gathered schoolchildren into his house after midnight. He had been warned by Ippun that there was such talk in the village.
“It is that wineshop owner,” she had whispered. “He is angry because your son has sheltered me. When I went to the market yesterday he shouted at me that I would soon be back in the wineshop and the Kim family would be in prison.”
Il-han had refused to appear afraid and he had continued his midnight school until two days ago, when Japanese gendarmes had indeed marched into the village to get themselves drunk in the wineshop and lay hold on the girls there. He had then sent word secretly to the parents of his pupils that they must not come again until he told them. But he had remained uneasy even at his books and sleepless at night.
Leaning over him in the moonlight, Sunia saw now how wan his face was and how sunken his cheeks. No, let him sleep. She would go and see who the intruder was. Perhaps it was only a neighbor’s dog. She crept out of bed and stole across the floor in her bare feet and soundlessly she slid back the door screen an inch and peered through the crack. A man stood there, a tall thin figure in a torn garment. She pushed the screen open a few inches more and spoke suddenly and strongly.
“Thief! What are you doing here?”
The man turned to her and she heard his voice subdued and deep.
“O-man-ee!”
Not since her sons were children had she heard herself thus called “Mother.”
“You — you—” She pushed the screen open wildly, it caught and she could not get through the narrow space and she began to sob. “Son — my son — Yul-chun—”
“Hush,” he whispered.
He lifted the screen from its runway and set it to one side, and took her in his arms. She clung to him.
“So tall,” she murmured, distracted, “so much taller — your bones sticking out — and you are in rags—”
She drew him into the house, crying and talking under her breath.
“Where have you been? No, wait, say nothing — I must call your father — here, drink some tea — still hot — no, it is cold — I will heat some food—”
He took her by the shoulders and shook her. “Mother, listen to me! I have no time. I must leave before sunrise. I took a risk — dangerous for me and for you both, you and my father. I have been sent here to our country — I cannot tell you why — or where I shall be — I must not come home — perhaps never again — Nobody knows what will happen.”
She was immediately calm. “Why have you not written to us?”
“I dared not write.”
“Where have you been these many years?”
“In China.”
China! She breathed the name of that unhappy country. She had seldom heard it spoken after the murder of the Queen.
“You must tell your father,” she said resolutely and drawing him by the hand she led him into the room where Il-han still slept.
She hated to wake him, yet she must for he would not forgive her if he were not waked. She began with slow soothing touches on his forehead, his cheeks, his hands. He stirred, he opened his eyes. She leaned close to his ear.
“Our son is here — our elder son!”
His face, bewildered, changed to consciousness. He sat upright in his bed. “What — where—”
“I am here, my father,” Yul-chun said. He knelt beside his father and Il-han looked into his face.
“Where have you been?” he asked as Sunia had.
“In China, Father — with the revolutionists.”
Il-han rubbed his face with his hands and stared afresh at his son. “You,” he said at last—“had you anything to do with the death of the old Empress? Was she murdered there as the Queen was murdered here?”
“No, Father. She died of old age.”
“They overthrew the Dragon Throne, those revolutionists!”
“Father, it had to be overthrown. The dynasty was dead. The rulers were corrupt. The old Empress held the empire together by her two hands.”
“Who are the rulers now?”
“The revolutionists will set up a republic like the American republic. The people will choose their rulers.”
Il-han was suddenly sharply awake and angry. “Folly! How can people choose a ruler when they are ignorant of such matters? I have been in America and you have not. Their people know how to choose — they vote — they — they—”
Sunia interrupted. “You two men, you have not seen each other, father and son, for how many years? Yet you quarrel over governments! Il-han, this son of ours has only a little while to stay with us. He must be on his way—”
“Where?” Il-han demanded.
“I cannot tell you, Father.”
“You are a spy?”
“I have a mission.”
“Then you are a spy!”
“Call me what you wish,” Yul-chun said. “I work for Korea.”
Il-han got out of bed and tied his robe about him and coiled his hair as he went on talking. “You will be caught and killed. Do you think you are more clever than these rogues who have spies in every winehouse? Count yourself dead.”
“I have stayed alive all these years, Father.”
“I do not know how,” Sunia put in. “You look starved.”
With this she hurried out of the room and to the kitchen to heat food.
“Come into the other room,” Il-han said. He led the way to his library and took his usual place on the floor cushion behind the low desk table.
“Now,” he said. “Tell me all that you will.”
Yul-chun knelt on the opposite floor cushion, his knees bare through his rags.
“Father,” he said in the low hurried half-whisper which seemed now his habit, “I cannot tell you anything. It is better for you to know nothing. If one day you are asked if I am your son, say that you have never seen me.”