The Patriot by Pearl S. Buck Page A

killed as revolutionists. Their names were not published and people did not hear of them. But from schools and from homes young men and women were marched away by police and by soldiers appearing suddenly and demanding them, and they were never seen again, nor could anyone save them after they were taken.
    “I will ask her,” I-wan had said.
    But Peony did not come near him that night and when he sent for her, she returned word by the servant that his grandmother needed her.
    The next day the general strike was declared. In his home I-wan at the breakfast table heard his father roar out over his newspaper.
    “What next? The silk mills are closed!”
    I-wan put down his chopsticks. His father went on reading aloud, furiously, his eyebrows frowning over his eyes.
    “In the Ta Tuan mills, three hundred workers on strike. In the Ling I mills, four hundred and twenty-five. In the Sung Ren mills—” he banged the paper with his fist. “We have money in every one of them! What is the government thinking of to allow this? It’s the students—they have been fomenting this!”
    “The government doesn’t kill enough of them,” his grandfather remarked.
    “What is this communism?” his mother asked. “I never used to hear of it. Is it some kind of foreign religion?”
    Peony, bringing in a bowl of hot eggs in broth, faltered and spilled a little of the broth.
    “Careless child!” his grandmother scolded her, “You grow more careless every day!”
    I-wan met Peony’s eyes, full of terror and meaning, and smiled at her. He must give her En-lan’s message. Now he watched for a chance to speak to her secretly. His father had risen from the breakfast table without finishing his food.
    “I must get to my office,” he exclaimed. “How do I know? It may be I shall find the whole place upset. At any rate, we must stir up the government. I for one shall refuse the new loan to the Ministry of Education if they cannot control the students better.”
    “Will you not have a little more hot tea?” Peony asked, coming to his side with the teapot in her hand. He went on talking without answering her.
    “Wait until that Chiang Kai-shek gets here!” he cried.
    I-wan looked up. Peony went around the table and filled each bowl with hot tea.
    “What do you mean?” I-wan asked.
    His father laughed harshly, drank his tea, and pushed his chair back and went out.
    “As if they could do anything to Chiang!” I-wan thought, ardently. Chiang was afraid of no one. He had driven his victorious way up from the south, a man full of the power of his own integrity. “As if he cared for bankers!” I-wan thought proudly. Then he remembered Peony again. He had for the moment forgotten her. But she had gone and when he went about the house he could not find her. He heard her voice in the kitchen at last. He looked in. She was there, stooping over a basket full of fish a vendor had brought in.
    “Peony!” he said.
    She looked up.
    “Where is my school cap?” He had not been able to find it and had not looked very far, needing excuse to see her.
    But she looked back to the fish. “On the third hook in your closet,” she said.
    He could think of nothing else and so he had to go on to school In the English class he shook his head slightly at En-lan.
    Twenty-one days the strike was to be held, that he knew. And the twenty-first day was the day. The city went on its seeming usual way, but nothing was the same. Everyone made his face calm and all came and went as usual, but the strikes spread into newspaper offices, into great shops and business places. The working people were gay, for from somewhere they were being given money, and for the first time since they were children they could go out by day to the amusement places and see all the wonders of animals trained to do tricks and foreign moving pictures and all such things they had only heard of before. By night they loitered about tea houses and gambling dens. I-wan could scarcely gather