Dragon Seed: The Story of China at War by Pearl S. Buck

nothing except the life of our child.”
    “But if it were not so,” he said, “there would be an end to all of us. While I worked I thought and now I know what I must do. We will not stay here. We will go away where the enemy cannot reach us, and you shall fulfill your time there.”
    “Leave your father’s house?” she cried. “But what will he say to it?”
    “I shall not tell him until I have found an answer to what he will say,” Lao Er replied.
    He took her hand and held it a while, thinking how sweet it was to have her gentle as she had been ever since she knew she was to have the child. And she sat clinging to his hand and thinking how sweet it was when she had her task to do to know that he would watch over her and make her safe while she did it. The old wilful restlessness had gone out of her for the time. “Whatever you think I should do I will do it,” she said. “And I will do it with you,” he said.
    It was enough for them for the moment. He rose and went back to his work and she went back to the loom which she was learning. Waste it was, perhaps, to learn it, if she were going away, but still some time it might be useful to her to know how to make cloth.
    “Where were you?” Ling Sao asked when she came in.
    “I went out to meet my husband,” Jade replied calmly and let the mother wonder why she was not ashamed to say it, and so she too went back to work.
    … Now it happened that the next time the flying ships came back Ling Tan himself was in the city. In their ignorance it is true that he and his sons and even Wu Lien thought the ships were finished when they came and went and that they would come no more, and so did many people in the city think so, and they began building and mending and making what they could out of their ruins. Not one of them thought that the evil would come again any more than an earthquake would return the next day or a thunder storm or any other evil sent by heaven. Thus Ling Tan that morning had told his sons to work without him because he was going into the city to see what was to be seen. He went alone, that two need not leave work, but when he had left his house he heard behind him footsteps running in the dust, and turning, he saw his youngest son.
    “Now, then!” Ling Tan cried.
    “Father, let me come with you,” the lad panted.
    “Why should you come?” Ling Tan asked. “I have not heard that it is a feast day.”
    His son circled his toe in the dust, and stared down at the mark.
    “I want to come,” he said sullenly.
    Ling Tan looked at him and weighed whether he would make a quarrel with this half-grown man. The day was so bright and good that he decided he would not, for he hated quarreling even in evil days, and always went on one side of a quarrel if he could.
    “Come then, curse you,” he said, and laughed, and his son lifted his head, and they set forth, father and son, over the cobbled roads, walking easily on their sandaled feet. The day before had been gray and though there was no rain the clouds had hung almost to the roofs of temples and pagodas. But today the air was like autumn instead of mid-summer and soon Ling Tan and his third son could no more keep down their hearts than a bubble can be kept under water. Their hearts would rise and be gay under such a blue sky and in the midst of such good harvests everywhere as they saw promised.
    When they entered at the south city gate at first there was nothing to tell them what had happened except the grave looks of the people who came and went. Now this city was a place famous for the gaiety of its people. It was an old city but for centuries it had been the place where rulers lived, kings and emperors and all those who can be idle and eat well and spend the people’s money and so give it back to them again freely. Laughter and music were to be heard anywhere night and day and there were beautiful young women to be had for the rich and even good enough ones for the poor, and upon the lake