Free The Patriot by Pearl S. Buck Page B

was swift against I-wan’s ear—“it will be the day. The plans are made. In twenty days the general strike is to be declared. It will give the workers time to meet and to complete the final organization. They will fight from within while he attacks from without. It was written on that paper I burned—secret orders. All that we have been working for is coming together now—the end for which all has been planned—a new country—our country!”
    They sat shivering a little from the cold night and their own heat within. The moon was setting and the walls threw black shadows over the alley so that they sat in darkness. But it was nothing—this present darkness. They did not see it. They were gazing into the brightness of what was to come, into that day when all that was now wrong should be made right. I-wan could see it all—the victorious army of the good. It was now gathered, already waiting.
    He had seen a picture of Chiang Kai-shek in his plain revolutionary uniform. At the time he had thought, “He looks a little like En-lan.” There was the same bold clear look in his eyes that En-lan had, the same strong peasant face. Now as he thought, his wandering idealism gathered about this figure. A man like that, so young and strong and full of noble power, leading the army of the young and strong…. He drew in his breath and was choked by something—tears or laughter. He stood up abruptly.
    “I am glad you told me that,” he said. “I shall work harder now. We will be ready.”
    En-lan did not answer. He rose and they walked hand in hand down the alley.
    “How soft your hand is!” En-lan said curiously. “You’ve never done any work, have you?”
    “No,” I-wan answered. He was ashamed, feeling En-lan’s hard hand in his, and after a moment he pulled his away. “But I’m strong enough,” he added.
    At the school gate he left En-lan and turned homeward. It was strange how heavy-hearted he had gone to En-lan and how light his heart now was. En-lan could always do that for him. The trouble with him, he thought, was that he let himself be lost in the present moment, and En-lan never did. To En-lan a moment was but a moment, and only the future was real. En-lan opened the doors of the present and showed him what was ahead and what they were working for together. He could think now of those creatures blown in the cold wind and feel pity for them and not agony.
    “Poor things,” he thought. “I am glad they will have their freedom for a while, at least, to take what they like.”
    He let himself in at the garden gate and entered the house and went upstairs. It would be strange when these sumptuous rooms were full of the poor, tearing at the curtains, dragging the rugs away, snatching and pulling. Would he mind?
    “No,” he told himself stoutly. “Why should I? I have never cared for such things.”
    And then he heard someone weeping. He listened. It was I-ko, crying like a boy. There was a light shining through the transom of his grandfather’s door. Before he could wonder, he saw the door of his own room open, and Peony came out silently.
    “I have been waiting for you,” she said in a low voice. “You are to go at once to your grandfather. I-ko has done something wicked.”
    It was like coming into a cage again to enter this room of his grandfather. It was hot and close. They were all there except his grandmother. His mother was weeping softly, her round face swollen and her cheeks trembling. His grandfather sat erect in his large chair, holding one of the cigars he loved between his thumb and finger. But he was not smoking. I-ko was standing by the table, leaning on his hands, his neck bent, his head hanging. Before I-wan opened the door he had heard his father shouting. But when he came in the voice stopped. They all looked at him except I-ko, who did not move. But his father began again at once, as soon as he saw I-wan.
    “It’s you—you, too—where have you been? It’s long past midnight. But