Free The Patriot by Pearl S. Buck

they all had in them. They were rough in speech and not one of them could read or write and their ways were as simple as the beasts’, so that when nature needed, a man turned where he stood and took relief. But they would have been abashed and humble before any rich man, not from fear so much as from their own timidness because they thought the gods had not made them equal to him. I-wan struggled to break down this gentleness.
    “You are as good as any man!” he shouted at them. “You have the right to all that any man has!”
    To this they laughed amiably and replied so peaceably that I-wan gnashed his teeth at them.
    “It is your kindness to say so,” they said courteously, “because we know we are nothing.”
    Yet he could not keep from loving them because they were so faithful in their trying to learn from him. They had to steal the time to come to learn from him, two or three coming at a time, and the others filling in their places for an hour or two in the mill. They tried hard, and by the end of the winter they could march together and each one could shoot well enough. With his own money I-wan had bought cartridges for them to practice with, and they were fair marksmen. Then, though they were proud of this, like children they longed for uniforms to wear. They fingered the rough stuff of his uniform and asked, “Shall we some day wear warm cloth like this?”
    “Yes,” he said, “that I promise you. You shall all wear warm clothes and eat all you want.”
    They clustered about him that night in the cold winter’s moonlight. He was ashamed that he had put on his greatcoat. He wished he had not, so that he might have been cold, too. He stood there, warm and well clad, his belly full of food such as they had never seen and which he ate every day, and he felt tears hot in his eyes. Their eyes were a little hopeful now, sometimes, when he spoke. But their wistful faces broke his heart, and the wind fluttered their cotton rags and pierced to his own bones. He cried in himself, “If my father’s house were mine, I would open the doors and take them in!” Then he thought, “It would be no use. They would come in and come in until there was no room to stand, and still they would be coming, millions of them.” No, if all the houses of the rich were opened it would not be enough, he thought, for all these poor. The poor filled the earth.
    “When shall it be?” a man asked. I-wan knew him well, a poor coughing young fellow who had not long to live. It would not be soon enough for him, however soon it was.
    “Soon,” he said, “very soon. Perhaps in the spring.”
    No, the only thing that could save them was the world made new for them, a world made for the poor and not the rich—a world whose laws were for the little man, whose houses were for him, whose whole thought and shape was for him, so that there could be no rich and strong to prey upon him.
    “Don’t stay here longer,” he said to them. “Go to your beds.”
    “When you speak,” a voice said out of a shadow, “we feel warmer and as though we had eaten something.”
    “Good night—good night,” he cried. He could bear no more—his heart was too full, and he turned away.
    That night, late as it was, he felt it impossible to go straight from their want to the plenty and waste of his own home. He strode through the cold, half-empty streets of this part of the city toward the school. He would go and talk awhile with En-lan.
    He found En-lan alone in his cubicle, not studying, but reading a sheet of closely written writing. When I-wan came in he put this under a book.
    “Come in,” he said. “Why are you so gloomy?”
    En-lan was never gloomy. His black eyes were bright and he looked as though he could scarcely keep from laughter. Indeed, in these days he made excuse to laugh at anything, as though he were so brimming with inner pleasure that it must overflow.
    “I have come back from—” I-wan paused. They never spoke aloud anything that