It was chance that brought Jane Norman into Shanghai. The British
transport, bound from Vladivostok to Hong-Kong, was destined to swing on
her mudhook forty-eight hours. So Jane, a Red Cross nurse, relieved and on
the first leg of the journey home to the United States, decided to spend
those forty-eight hours in Shanghai, see the sights and do a little
shopping. Besides, she had seen nothing of China. On the way over,
fourteen months since, she had come direct from San Francisco to the
Russian port.
Jane was one of those suffocating adventurers whom circumstance had fenced
in. In fancy she beat her hands against the bars of this cage that had no
door, but through which she could see the caravans of dreams. Sea room and
sky room were the want of her, and no matter which way she turned--bars.
Her soul craved colour, distances, mountain peaks; and about all she had
ever seen were the white walls of hospital wards. It is not adventure to
tend the sick, to bind up wounds, to cheer the convalescing; it is a dull
if angelic business.
In her heart of hearts Jane knew that she had accepted the hardships of
the Siberian campaign with the secret hope that some adventure might
befall her--only to learn that her inexorable cage had travelled along
with her. Understand, this longing was not the outcome of romantical
reading; it was in the marrow of her--inherent. She was not in search of
Prince Charming. She rarely thought of love as other young women think of
it. She had not written in her mind any particular event she wanted to
happen; but she knew that there must be colour, distance, mountain peaks.
A few days of tremendous excitement; and then she acknowledged that she
would be quite ready to return to the old monotonous orbit.
The Great War to Jane had not been romance and adventure; her imagination,
lively enough in other directions, had not falsely coloured the stupendous
crime. She had accepted it instantly for what it was--pain, horror, death,
hunger, and pestilence. She saw it as the genius of Vasili Vereshchagin
and Emile Zola had seen it.
The pioneer--after all, what was it he was truly seeking? Freedom! And as
soon as ever civilization caught up with him he moved on. Without
understanding it, that was really all Jane wanted--freedom. Freedom from
genteel poverty, freedom from the white walls of hospitals, freedom from
exactly measured hours. Twenty four hours a day, all her own; that was
what she wanted; twenty-four hours a day to do with as she pleased--to
sleep in, play, laugh, sing, love in. Pioneers, explorers,
adventurers--what else do they seek? Twenty-four hours a day, all their
own!
At half after eight--about the time Ling Foo slid off his stool--the
tender from the transport sloshed up to the customs jetty and landed Jane,
a lone woman among a score of officers of various nationalities. But it
really wasn't the customs jetty her foot touched; it was the outer rim of
the whirligig.
Some officer had found an extra slicker for her and an umbrella. Possibly
the officer in olive drab who assisted her to the nearest covered 'ricksha
and directed the placement of her luggage.
"China!"
"Yes, ma'am. Mandarin coats and oranges, jade and jasmine, Pekingese and
red chow dogs."
"Oh, I don't mean that kind!" she interrupted. "I should think these poor
'ricksha boys would die of exposure."
"Manchus are the toughest human beings on earth. I'll see you in the
morning?"
"That depends," she answered, "upon the sun. If it rains I shall lie abed
all day. A real bed! Honour bright, I've often wondered if I should ever
see one again. Fourteen months in that awful world up there! Siberia!"
"You're a plucky woman."
"Somebody had to go. Armenia or Siberia, it was all the same to me if I
could help." She held out her hand. "Good-night, captain. Thank you for
all your kindness to me. Ten o'clock, if it is sunshiny. You're to show me
the shops. Oh, if I were only rich!"
"And what would you do if you had riches?"
"I'd buy all the silk at Kai Fook's--isn't that the name?--and roll myself
up in it like a cocoon."
The man laughed. He understood. A touch of luxury, after all these
indescribable months of dirt and disease, rain and snow and ice, among a
people who lived like animals, who had the intelligence of animals. When
he spoke the officer's voice was singularly grave:
"These few days have been very happy ones for me. At ten--if the sun
shines. Good-night."
The 'rickshas in a wavering line began to roll along the Bund, which was
practically deserted. The lights shone through slanting lattices of rain.
Twice automobiles shot past, and Jane resented them. China, the flowery
kingdom! She was touched with a little thrill of exultation. But oh, to
get home, home! Never again would she long for palaces and servants and
all that. The little wooden-frame house and the garden would be paradise
enough. The crimson ramblers, the hollyhocks, the bachelor's-buttons, and
the peonies, the twisted apple tree that never bore more than enough for
one pie! Her throat tightened.
She hadn't heard from the mother in two months, but there would be mail at
Hong-Kong. Letters and papers from home! Soon she would be in the sitting
room recounting her experiences; and the little mother would listen
politely, even doubtfully, but very glad to have her back. How odd it was!
In the mother the spirit of adventure never reached beyond the garden
gate, while in the daughter it had always been keen for the far places.
And in her first adventure beyond the gate, how outrageously she had been
cheated! She had stepped out of drab and dreary routine only to enter a
drabber and drearier one.
What a dear boy this American officer was! He seemed to have been
everywhere, up and down the world. He had hunted the white orchid of
Borneo; he had gone pearl hunting in the South Seas; and he knew Monte
Carlo, London, Paris, Naples, Cairo. But he never spoke of home. She had
cleverly led up to it many times in the past month, but always he had
unembarrassedly switched the conversation into another channel.
This puzzled her deeply. From the other Americans she never heard of
anything but home, and they were all mad to get there. Yet Captain
Dennison maintained absolute silence on that topic. Clean shaven, bronzed,
tall, and solidly built, clear-eyed, not exactly handsome but
engaging--what lay back of the man's peculiar reticence? Being a daughter
of Eve, the mystery intrigued her profoundly.
Had he been a professional sailor prior to the war? It seemed to her if
that had been the case he would have enlisted in the Navy. He talked like
a man who had spent many years on the water; but in labour or in pleasure,
he made it most difficult for her to tell. Of his people, of his past, not
Bluebeard's closet was more firmly shut. Still with a little smile she
recalled that eventually a woman had opened that closet door, and hadn't
had her head cut off, either.
He was poor like herself. That much was established. For he had said
frankly that when he received his discharge from the Army he would have to
dig up a job to get a meal ticket.
Dear, dear! Would she ever see a continuous stretch of sunshine again? How
this rain tore into things! Shanghai! Wouldn't it be fun to have a
thousand dollars to fling away on the shops? She wanted jade beads,
silks--not the quality the Chinese made for export, but that heavy, shiver
stuff that was as strong and shielding as wool--ivory carvings, little
bronze Buddhas with prayer scrolls inside of them, embroidered jackets.
But why go on? She had less than a hundred, and she would have to carry
home gimcracks instead of curios.
They were bobbing over a bridge now, and a little way beyond she saw the
lighted windows of the great caravansary, the Astor House. It smacked of
old New York, where in a few weeks she would be stepping back into the
dull routine of hospital work.
She paid the ricksha boy and ran into the lobby, stamping her feet and
shaking the umbrella. The slicker was an overhead affair, and she had to
take off her hat to get free. This act tumbled her hair about
considerably, and Jane Norman's hair was her glory. It was the tint of the
copper beech, thick, finespun, with intermittent twists that gave it a
wavy effect.
Jane was not beautiful; that is, her face was not--it was comely. It was
her hair that turned male heads. It was then men took note of her body.
She was magnificently healthy, and true health is a magnet as powerful as
that of the true pole. It drew toward her men and women and children. Her
eyes were gray and serious; her teeth were white and sound. She was
twenty-four.
There was, besides her hair, another thing that was beautiful--her voice.
It answered like the G string of an old Strad to every emotion. One could
tell instantly when she was merry or sad or serious or angry. She could
not hide her emotions any more than she could hide her hair. As a war
nurse she had been adored by the wounded men and fought over by the
hospital commandants. But few men had dared make love to her. She had that
peculiar gift of drawing and repelling without consciousness.
As the Chinese boy got her things together Jane espied the bookstall.
American newspapers and American magazines! She packed four or five of
each under her arm, nodded to the boy, and followed the manager to the
lift! She hoped the lights would hang so that she could lie in bed and
read. Her brain was thirsty for a bit of romance.
Humming, she unpacked. She had brought one evening gown, hoping she might
have a chance to wear it before it fell apart from disuse. She shook out
the wrinkles and hung the gown in the closet. Lavender! She raised a fold
of the gown and breathed in rapturously that homy perfume. She sighed.
Perhaps she would have to lay away all her dreams in lavender.
A little later she sat before the dressing mirror, combing her hair. How
it happened she never could tell, but she heard a crash upon the wood
floor, and discovered her hand mirror shattered into a thousand
splinters.
Seven years' bad luck! She laughed. Fate had blundered. The mirror had
fallen seven years too late.