The Promise: A Novel of China and Burma (Oriental Novels of Pearl S. Buck) by Pearl S. Buck Read Free Book Online Page A

water of the pool. He sat watching this clear reflection. Since it was winter there were no lotus leaves, and the pool was a clear mirror under the sky.
    Liu Ma came out, her under lip thrust far beyond her upper one, and she set down the tray she carried on the garden table near the porcelain seat. She poured the tea from a blue and white teapot into the bowls and then to show that she did not approve of these two sitting together in talk, she did not hand them their bowls, but went away again into the kitchen. In a moment the quick smoke of grass-fed fire poured out of the low chimney and hung above the court like a cloud. Mayli laughed.
    “Liu Ma hopes that the smoke will choke you,” she said to Sheng.
    “I am too good to that old crone,” Sheng said with heat. “I give her very often a silver coin to make my way here easy.”
    “She is old,” Mayli said, “and she loved my mother, and she does not think I am good enough to be my mother’s daughter. She thinks I am too foreign.”
    “And it may be that you are,” Sheng retorted.
    He saw the painted reflection of her pretty head shake itself in the water, and then he saw her reflected face grow grave.
    “Whether one is foreign or not,” she said, “today what does it matter? It is not sensible any more to hate something—or some one—because he is foreign. It is better to ask ourselves whether we should not ally ourselves with the strongest people in the world, and these are still the peoples of Ying and Mei.”
    “Are they so strong?” he asked. “Then why have the dwarfs beaten them so easily, and us they have not beaten although we have fought all these years?”
    “Do not take a trick for a victory,” she said. “I know so well those people of Mei! It is quite easy to believe that the enemy tricked them. They are so rich, so used to their own skills and power, that they would not believe they could be tricked. But now in their fury they will be twice as fierce and ten times as wary. In one day they learned what it might have taken them a year of usual war to learn.”
    “It is a pity for us that it had to be learned at such cost to us also,” Sheng said grimly. “With a few of those airships that were destroyed in an hour or two, we could have driven the enemy out of our land. It is not only they who were the losers.”
    Mayli dipped her hand into the pool and stirred the water gently in small circles. “All that you say is true,” she said, “and yet when I remember them—I know they cannot lose—no, whatever has happened, and whatever will happen, they will be the victors in the end and for this we must stay with them.”
    “What do you remember?” he asked. The tea grew cold in the bowls but neither of them thought of it. The small dog had lain down on the folded towel and now it rose again and whimpered beside its mistress but she did not hear it. She let her hand lie in the water, as she remembered, and she sat gazing across the court, seeing only what she remembered.
    “It is the most beautiful country,” she said. “I do not love it as my own, and yet I can say that. The great roads go winding over the hills and the mountains and the deserts and the plains. The villages are so clean, and the people are so clean and fed well. Upon the land the farmhouses are clean, too, and there are no beggars with sores and no hungry wolves of dogs. The forests are deep and the streams are clear—”
    “These will not win a war,” he said sternly.
    “No, but there are the factories,” she said quickly, “the factories make ships and automobiles—everybody has automobiles, and they know all the strength and the secrets of machines. Why, they can make enough airplanes to cover the earth!”
    “It is strange they have not been able to send us a few,” he said bitterly.
    “No, but they have not begun yet,” she cried. “You do not understand—” she cried. “A people who are so happy and so well fed—they cannot wake up in a moment.