  It was a shame to sneak off after they had received such a grand reception, but had they remained, they must surely have been crushed by the mob of boys in khaki eager to congratulate the girls from America. So, with the lady of the hour at the wheel, they piled into the old jeep and rode away. “They’re such nice boys!” Isabelle murmured. “It seems terrible that some of them may die horrible deaths tomorrow, or the next day.” “Perhaps not so many,” Gale replied hopefully. “Tonight while we were waiting for things to start the colonel told me how well things have been planned. He thinks they’ll just go sweeping across Burma into China. He says this is a diversionary move. The main fight will be farther south. The Japs don’t expect this so they won’t be prepared.” “He told you all that?” Isabelle exclaimed. “Oh, well, nothing matters much. It won’t be long now. And at that, he didn’t tell you a great deal. They have been at it for months. In another forest quite a way from here, engines with portable saw mills have been cutting timber for bridges across the river that the colonel and his party waded on their retreat. “It’s really marvelous. Every piece is cut just right. The bridges are set up, then taken down again in the forest. When the time comes the parts will be sent over chutes built down the mountain. “They’ve built hundreds of boats too, and they’ll go down the chutes. The whole army will be in Burma before the Japs know they’re coming.” “That’s marvelous.” Gale sighed. “I wish the boys luck, every one of them. One more thing I wish.” “What’s that?” Isabelle asked. “I wish I could hear from Jimmie.” “Oh! That reminds me!” Isabelle exclaimed. “A flight commander was in to see the colonel today. The colonel was out, so I had a chance to talk to him. I asked him about Jimmie. He said he couldn’t tell me a thing, then smiled in a queer sort of way and said something about a secret mission. It all sounded very strange.” “I’ll say it does!” Gale agreed. “But,” Isabelle exclaimed. “Did you report what we saw at the temple?” “About the woman in purple? Oh, sure I did! I told the colonel about it first.” “What did he say,” Gale asked anxiously. “He seemed interested. He’s seen the woman—met her at some big dinner. It seems that in India she is still quite a person. It’s only in China and Burma that she’s in bad.” “That’s the way it is,” Gale exclaimed. “A woman in a glorious gown can get around men. I shouldn’t wonder if a lot of those English secret agents were really stupid.” “Oh! They are!” Than Shwe agreed. “Some of them are very, very stupid. “I meant to tell you,” she added as an afterthought, “that Chinese nurse, Mai-da, is coming to visit us tonight. Believe me, she will tell you about this Madam Stark, the woman in purple, as you call her. She will tell you plenty.” “The colonel wasn’t taken in by this woman.” Isabelle defended her boss. “He just never has seen much of her—really doesn’t know much about her. He sent me over to the Army Intelligence Headquarters to report on her. The head man there was out. Nearly everyone is these days. Big things just around the corner, you know. A very nice boy with pink cheeks, blue eyes and a smile, wrote down all I told him.” “And said he’d report on it,” Gale exploded. “Oh! Sure! That’s army life for you! My Dad said I’d have to be a good waiter. And if I get my head blown off by a bomb while I wait, what then? I saw the tall thin man who is lame in both legs again today.” “You did?” Isabelle exclaimed. “Way up here?” “Sure. On the ridge only half a mile from our hideout. What do you expect? He and that woman in purple are anti-British spies, I tell you! And they’re out to wreck us—have been ever since I put my radar fingers on those Jap planes up there in the clouds above the city and helped bring them down. They’ll get us if they can—yes—and the Three Secrets of Radar as well.” At that moment a small round face appeared at the opening of the tent flap and a voice said: “May I come in?” It was Mai-da, the Chinese nurse. “Come in! Come right on!” was their welcome. Jan had been brewing tea. It was steeped now, so that all sat on the floor sipping tea, munching gingersnaps and talking. “You have been a long time away from your home,” Gale said to Mai-da. “Oh, yes! A very long time,” Mai-da agreed. “India has been very kind to me but I shall be glad to get back to my home. We ARE going back, you know.” Mai-da’s voice rose. “Everyone believes that. We have great faith in your major.” As Gale looked at the Chinese girl with her small hands and feet, her round, doll-like face and slender body, she marvelled that she could stand up to the work of a nurse. But Mai-da had endured more than she dreamed. “Tell us about your home, Mai-da,” Isabelle said. “Oh, it is really very charming. At least I hope you may say so when you see it.” Mai-da half apologized. “It is at the foot of a hill where big, black pines seem to be marching. It has a high stone wall about it. Ours is an old, old family. Thirty generations have lived there. And we all live together there now, seventy people of us, but some have gone to war. Uncles, aunts, cousins, grandmothers, great-grand-father—they are all there.” She laughed softly. “Once we nearly lost our home.” Her face sobered. “But perhaps you do not care for sad stories,—only those that are good, beautiful and happy.” Mai-da paused. “We take life as we find it,” was Gale’s slow reply. “If there is evil in the world, if bad men and women seem to have their way, we want to know about it. But all the time we try to kid ourselves into believing that ‘God is in His heavens—all’s right with the world.’ “And perhaps we’re not kidding ourselves so much after all,” she added softly. “Tell us about the time you nearly lost your home, Mai-da.” “It was truly terrible,” Mai-da murmured softly. “Wicked woman came to live in a large house built by a trader. It had been her husband’s house. He was gone now, so she claimed it. There was no one who could tell her to go away.” “My grandfather, he is old and very wise. He said: ‘If Madam Stark lives in that house evil days will come to us’.” “Madam Stark,” Isabelle murmured. “The woman in purple,” Gale added. Mai-da continued in her sing-song voice, so slow and musical. She had learned English in a mission school and had traveled in America. “Grandfather was right. This woman hired many strong men to guard her men who thought China had no chance against the terrible Japs, men who said ‘It is better to give up and allow the Japs to rule us’.” “The Japs came closer and closer to the beautiful little city of May-da, close to our home. There was a temple on the hill above our home. The Japs bombed it. Many priests were killed, and they were oh, such good men, those priests, always doing good, never harming anyone.” Mai-da sighed deeply, then went on. “There was a war lord living close to our city. He pretended to be loyal to Chiang Kai-shek, but I don’t think he ever was. Madam Stark, in her purple gown of rich silk fascinated him. He did what she said. “One day she said: ‘The Japs are very close to the city. The city will be captured. It is better to burn the city than to let the Japs have it.’ “So the war lord told his men to burn the city,” Than Shwe murmured sadly. “I have heard of this. It was very terrible.” “The city was burned.” Mai-da’s voice was low. “Many people lost their life. Others wandered homeless in the fields. Our home is outside the city. We took in all the people we could. “Then,”—her voice rose, “my grandfather, who was old but very brave, said, ‘This terrible woman must be driven out.’ He talked to all the people. They took all the guns and knives they had and went after that woman and if she had not gone away in a plane she would have been killed. Her big house was burned. The people joined with the soldiers. The Japs were driven back, and the poor burnt city was never captured. My home still smiles from the foot of the mountain. It waits for me.—Tomorrow or the day after,” the little Chinese nurse finished quite simply,—“I’m going home.” “And that was the Woman in Purple,” Gale said, springing up. “If the army doesn’t get her then we must.” “And we will!” Than Shwe exclaimed. “By all the gods of India, Burma, China and America, we will!” |
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