the work was done and the Mother Superior with an indulgent, deprecating
smile untied the parcel. The handkerchiefs were of very fine lawn and
the initials embroidered in a complicated cypher were surmounted by a
crown of strawberry leaves. When Kitty had properly admired the
workmanship the handkerchiefs were wrapped up again and the parcel
handed to her. Sister St. Joseph, with an "_eh bien, Madame, je vous
quitte_" and a repetition of her polite and impersonal salutations, went
away. Kitty realised that this was the moment to take her leave of the
Superior. She thanked her for her kindness to her. They walked together
along the bare, white-washed corridors.
"Would it be asking too much of you to register the parcel when you
arrive at Marseilles?" said the Superior.
"Of course I'll do that," said Kitty.
She glanced at the address. The name seemed very grand, but the place
mentioned attracted her attention.
"But that is one of the _châteaux_ I've seen. I was motoring with
friends in France."
"It is very possible," said the Mother Superior. "Strangers are
permitted to view it on two days a week."
"I think if I had ever lived in such a beautiful place I should never
have had the courage to leave it."
"It is of course a historical monument. It is scarcely intimate. If I
regretted anything it would not be that, but the little _château_ that
we lived in when I was a child. It was in the Pyrenees. I was born
within sound of the sea. I do not deny that sometimes I should like to
hear the waves beating against the rocks."
Kitty had an idea that the Mother Superior, divining her thought and the
reason for her remarks, was slyly making fun of her. But they reached
the little, unpretentious door of the convent. To Kitty's surprise the
Mother Superior took her in her arms and kissed her. The pressure of her
pale lips on Kitty's cheeks, she kissed her first on one side and then
on the other, was so unexpected that it made her flush and inclined to
cry.
"Good-bye, God bless you, my dear child." She held her for a moment in
her arms. "Remember that it is nothing to do your duty, that is demanded
of you and is no more meritorious than to wash your hands when they are
dirty; the only thing that counts is the love of duty; when love and
duty are one, then grace is in you and you will enjoy a happiness which
passes all understanding."
The convent door closed for the last time behind her.
_lxix_
Waddington walked with Kitty up the hill and they turned aside for a
moment to look at Walter's grave; at the memorial arch he said good-bye
to her, and looking at it for the last time she felt that she could
reply to the enigmatic irony of its appearance with an equal irony of
her own. She stepped into her chair.
One day passed after the other. The sights of the wayside served as a
background to her thoughts. She saw them as it were in duplicate,
rounded as though in a stereoscope, with an added significance because
to everything she saw was added the recollection of what she had seen
when but a few short weeks before she had taken the same journey in the
contrary direction. The coolies with their loads straggled disorderly,
two or three together, and then a hundred yards behind one by himself,
and then two or three more; the soldiers of the escort shuffled along
with a clumsy walk that covered five and twenty miles a day; the amah
was carried by two bearers and Kitty, not because she was heavier, but
for face's sake, by four. Now and then they met a string of coolies
lolloping by in line with their heavy burdens, now and then a Chinese
official in a sedan who looked at the white woman with inquisitive eyes;
now they came across peasants in faded blue and huge hats on their way
to market and now a woman, old or young, tottering along on her bound
feet. They passed up and down little hills laid out with trim rice
fields and farm-houses nestling cosily in a grove of bamboos; they
passed through ragged villages and populous cities walled like the
cities in a missal. The sun of the early autumn was pleasant, and if at
daybreak, when the shimmering dawn lent the neat fields the enchantment
of a fairy tale, it was cold, the warmth later was very grateful. Kitty
was filled by it with a sense of beatitude which she made no effort to
resist.
The vivid scenes with their elegant colour, their unexpected
distinction, and their strangeness, were like an arras before which,
like mysterious, shadowy shapes, played the phantoms of Kitty's fancy.
They seemed wholly unreal. Mei-tan-fu with its crenellated walls was
like the painted canvas placed on the stage in an old play to represent
a city. The nuns, Waddington and the Manchu woman who loved him, were
fantastic characters in a masque; and the rest, the people sidling along
the tortuous streets and those who died, were nameless supers. Of course
it had, they all had, a significance of some sort, but what was it? It
was as though they performed a ritual dance, elaborate and ancient, and
you knew that those complicated measures had a meaning which it was
important for you to know; and yet you could see no clue, no clue.
It seemed incredible to Kitty (an old woman was passing along the
causeway, in blue, and the blue in the sunshine was like lapis lazuli;
her face with its thousand little wrinkles was like a mask of old ivory;
and she leaned, as she walked on her tiny feet, on a long black staff),
it seemed incredible to Kitty that she and Walter had taken part in that
strange and unreal dance. They had played important parts too. She might
easily have lost her life: he had. Was it a joke? Perhaps it was nothing
but a dream from which she would suddenly awake with a sigh of relief.
It seemed to have taken place a long time ago and in a far-off place. It
was singular how shadowy the persons of that play seemed against the
sunny background of real life. And now it seemed to Kitty like a story
that she was reading; it was a little startling that it seemed to
concern her so little. She found already that she could not recall with
distinctness Waddington's face which had been so familiar to her.
This evening they should reach the city on the Western River from which
she was to take the steamer. Thence it was but a night's run to
Tching-Yen.
_lxx_
At first because she had not wept when Walter died she was ashamed. It
seemed dreadfully callous. Why, the eyes of the Chinese officer, Colonel
Yü, had been wet with tears. She was dazed by her husband's death. It
was difficult to understand that he would not come into the bungalow
again and that when he got up in the morning she would not hear him take
his bath, in the Suchow tub. He was alive and now he was dead. The
sisters wondered at her Christian resignation and admired the courage
with which she bore her loss. But Waddington was shrewd; for all his
grave sympathy she had a feeling that--how should she put it?--that he
had his tongue in his cheek. Of course, Walter's death had been a shock
to her. She didn't want him to die. But after all she didn't love him,
she had never loved him; it was decent to bear herself with becoming
sorrow; it would be ugly and vulgar even to let anyone see into her
heart; but she had gone through too much to make pretences to herself.
It seemed to her that this at least the last few weeks had taught her,
that if it is necessary sometimes to lie to others it is always
despicable to lie to oneself. She was sorry that Walter had died in that
tragic manner, but she was sorry with a purely human sorrow such as she
might have felt if it had been an acquaintance. She would acknowledge
that Walter had admirable qualities; it just happened that she did not
like him; he had always bored her. She would not admit that his death
was a relief to her, she could say honestly that if by a word of hers
she could bring him back to life she would say it, but she could not
resist the feeling that his death made her way to some extent a trifle
easier. They would never have been happy together and yet to part would
have been terribly difficult. She was startled at herself for feeling as
she did; she supposed that people would think her heartless and cruel if
they knew. Well, they shouldn't know. She wondered if all her fellows
had in their hearts shameful secrets which they spent their time
guarding from curious glances.
She looked very little into the future and she made no plans. The only
thing she knew was that she wanted to stay in Tching-Yen as short a
while as might be. She looked forward to arriving there with horror. It
seemed to her that she would like to wander for ever through that
smiling and friendly country in her rattan chair, and, an indifferent
spectator for ever of the phantasmagoria of life, pass each night under
a different roof. But of course the immediate future must be faced: she
would go to the hotel when she reached Tching-Yen, she would arrange
about getting rid of the house and selling the furniture; there would be
no need to see Townsend. He would have the grace to keep out of her way.
She would like, all the same, to see him once more in order to tell him
what a despicable creature she thought him.
But what did Charles Townsend matter?
Like a rich melody on a harp that rang in exultant arpeggios through the
complicated harmonies of a symphony, one thought beat in her heart
insistently. It was this thought which gave their exotic beauty to the
rice fields, which made a little smile break on her pale lips as a
smooth-faced lad swung past her on his way to the market town with
exultation in his carriage and audacity in his eyes, and which gave the
magic of a tumultuous life to the cities she passed through. The city of
the pestilence was a prison from which she was escaped, and she had
never known before how exquisite was the blueness of the sky and what a
joy there was in the bamboo copses that leaned with such an adorable
grace across the causeway. Freedom! That was the thought that sung in
her heart so that even though the future was so dim, it was iridescent
like the mist over the river where the morning sun fell upon it.
Freedom! Not only freedom from a bond that irked, and a companionship
which depressed her; freedom, not only from the death which had
threatened, but freedom from the love that had degraded her; freedom
from all spiritual ties, the freedom of a disembodied spirit; and with
freedom, courage and a valiant unconcern for whatever was to come.
_lxxi_
When the boat docked at Tching-Yen Kitty, who had been standing on deck
to look at the coloured, gay and vivacious traffic of the river, went
into her cabin to see that the amah had left nothing behind. She gave
herself a look in the glass. She wore black, the nuns had dyed a dress
for her, but not mourning; and the thought crossed her mind that the
first thing she must do was to see to this. The habiliments of woe could
not but serve as an effective disguise to her unexpected feelings. There
was a knock on her cabin door. The amah opened it.
"Mrs. Fane."
Kitty turned round and saw a face which at the first moment she did not
recognise. Then her heart gave a sudden quick beat and she flushed. It
was Dorothy Townsend. Kitty so little expected to see her that she knew
neither what to do nor what to say. But Mrs. Townsend came into the
cabin and with an impulsive gesture took Kitty in her arms.
"Oh, my dear, my dear, I'm so dreadfully sorry for you."
Kitty allowed herself to be kissed. She was a little surprised at this
effusiveness in a woman whom she had always thought cold and distant.
"It's very kind of you," murmured Kitty.
"Come on deck. The amah will look after your things and my boys are
here."
She took Kitty's hand and Kitty, allowing herself to be led, noticed
that her good-natured, weather-beaten face bore an expression of real
concern.
"Your boat's early, I very nearly didn't get down in time," said Mrs.
Townsend. "I couldn't have borne it if I'd missed you."
"But you didn't come to meet me?" exclaimed Kitty.
"Of course I did."
"But how did you know I was coming?"
"Mr. Waddington sent me a telegram."
Kitty turned away. She had a lump in her throat. It was funny that a
little unexpected kindness should so affect her. She did not want to
cry; she wished Dorothy Townsend would go away. But Dorothy took the
hand that was hanging by Kitty's side and pressed it. It embarrassed
Kitty that this shy woman should be so demonstrative.
"I want you to do me a great favour. Charlie and I want you to come and
stay with us while you're in Tching-Yen."
Kitty snatched her hand away.
"It's awfully kind of you. I couldn't possibly."
"But you must. You can't go and live all by yourself in your own house.
It would be dreadful for you. I've prepared everything. You shall have
your own sitting-room. You can have your meals there if you don't care
to have them with us. We both want you to come."
"I wasn't thinking of going to the house. I was going to get myself a
room at the Tching-Yen Hotel. I couldn't possibly put you to so much
trouble."
The suggestion had taken her by surprise. She was confused and vexed. If
Charlie had had any sense of decency he would never have allowed his
wife to make the invitation. She did not wish to be under an obligation
to either of them.
"Oh, but I couldn't bear the idea of your living at a hotel. And you'd
hate the Tching-Yen Hotel just now. With all those people about and the
band playing jazz all the time. Please say you'll come to us. I promise
you that Charlie and I won't bother you."
"I don't know why you should be so kind to me." Kitty was getting a
little short of excuses; she could not bring herself to utter a blunt
and definite no. "I'm afraid I'm not very good company among strangers
just now."
"But need we be strangers to you? Oh, I do so want not to be, I so want
you to allow me to be your friend." Dorothy clasped her hands and her
voice, her cool, deliberate and distinguished voice, was tremulous with
tears. "I so awfully want you to come. You see, I want to make amends to
you."
Kitty did not understand. She did not know what amends Charlie's wife
owed her.
"I'm afraid I didn't very much like you at first. I thought you rather
fast. You see, I'm old-fashioned and I suppose I'm intolerant."
Kitty gave her a passing glance. What she meant was that at first she
had thought Kitty vulgar. Though Kitty allowed no shadow of it to show
on her face in her heart she laughed. Much she cared for what any one
thought of her now!
"And when I heard that you'd gone with your husband into the jaws of
death, without a moment's hesitation, I felt such a frightful cad. I
felt so humiliated. You've been so wonderful, you've been so brave, you
make all the rest of us look so dreadfully cheap and second-rate." Now
the tears were pouring down her kind, homely face. "I can't tell you how
much I admire you and what a respect I have for you. I know I can do
nothing to make up for your terrible loss, but I want you to know how
deeply, how sincerely I feel for you. And if you'll only allow me to do
a little something for you it will be a privilege. Don't bear me a
grudge because I misjudged you. You're heroic and I'm just a silly fool
of a woman."
Kitty looked down at the deck. She was very pale. She wished that
Dorothy would not show such uncontrollable emotion. She was touched, it
was true, but she could not help a slight feeling of impatience that
this simple creature should believe such lies.
"If you really mean that you'd like to have me, of course I shall be
glad to come," she sighed.
_lxxii_
The Townsends lived on the Mount in a house with a wide view over the
sea, and Charlie did not as a rule come up to luncheon, but on the day
of Kitty's arrival Dorothy (they were Kitty and Dorothy to one another
by now) told her that if she felt up to seeing him he would like to come
and bid her welcome. Kitty reflected that since she must see him she
might just as well see him at once and she looked forward with grim
amusement to the embarrassment she must cause him. She saw very well
that the invitation to stay had arisen in his wife's fancy and
notwithstanding his own feelings he had immediately approved. Kitty knew
how great his desire was always to do the right thing and to offer her a
gracious hospitality was obviously very much the right thing. But he
could hardly remember that last interview of theirs without
mortification: to a man so vain as Townsend it must be galling like an
ulcer that would not heal. She hoped that she had hurt him as much as he
had hurt her. He must hate her now. She was glad to think that she did
not hate, but only despised him. It gave her a sardonic satisfaction to
reflect that whatever his feelings he would be obliged to make much of
her. When she left his office that afternoon he must have hoped with all
his heart that he would never set eyes on her again.
And now, sitting with Dorothy, she waited for him to come in. She was
conscious of her delight in the sober luxury of the drawing-room. She
sat in an armchair, there were lovely flowers here and there, on the
walls were pleasing pictures; the room was shaded and cool, it was
friendly and homelike. She remembered with a faint shudder the bare and
empty parlour of the missionary's bungalow; the rattan chairs and the
kitchen-table with its cotton cloth, the stained shelves with all those
cheap editions of novels, and the little skimpy red curtains that had
such a dusty look. Oh, it had been so uncomfortable! She supposed that
Dorothy had never thought of that.
They heard a motor drive up, and Charlie strode into the room.
"Am I late? I hope I haven't kept you waiting. I had to see the Governor
and I simply couldn't get away."
He went up to Kitty, and took both her hands.
"I'm so very, very glad you've come here. I know Dorothy has told you
that we want you to stay as long as ever you like and that we want you
to look upon our house as your home. But I want to tell you so myself as
well. If there's anything in the world I can do for you I shall only be
too happy." His eyes wore a charming expression of sincerity; she
wondered if he saw the irony in hers. "I'm awfully stupid at saying some
things and I don't want to seem a clumsy fool, but I do want you to know
how deeply I sympathise with you in your husband's death. He was a
thundering good chap, and he'll be missed here more than I can say."
"Don't, Charlie," said his wife. "I'm sure Kitty understands. . . . Here
are the cocktails."
Following the luxurious custom of the foreigners in China two boys in
uniform came into the room with savouries and cocktails. Kitty refused.
"Oh, you must have one," insisted Townsend in his breezy, cordial way.
"It'll do you good and I'm sure you haven't had such a thing as a
cocktail since you left Tching-Yen. Unless I'm very much mistaken you
couldn't get ice at Mei-tan-fu."
"You're not mistaken," said Kitty.
For a moment she had a picture before her mind's eye of that beggar with
the tousled head in the blue rags through which you saw the emaciated
limbs, who had lain dead against the compound wall.
_lxxiii_
They went in to luncheon. Charlie, sitting at the head of his table,
easily took charge of the conversation. After those first few words of
sympathy he treated Kitty, not as though she had just suffered a
devastating experience, but rather as though she had come in from
Shanghai for a change after an operation for appendicitis. She needed
cheering and he was prepared to cheer her. The best way of making her
feel at home was to treat her as one of the family. He was a tactful
man. He began talking of the autumn race meeting, and the polo--by Jove,
he would have to give up playing polo if he couldn't get his weight
down--and a chat he had had that morning with the Governor. He spoke of
a party they had been to on the Admiral's flag-ship, the state of
affairs in Canton, and of the links at Lushan. In a few minutes Kitty
felt that she might have been away for no longer than a week-end. It was
incredible that over there, up-country, six hundred miles away only (the
distance from London to Edinburgh, wasn't it?) men, women and children
had been dying like flies. Soon she found herself asking about so and so
who had broken a collar-bone at polo and if Mrs. This had gone home or
Mrs. That was playing in the tennis tournament. Charlie made his little
jokes and she smiled at them. Dorothy with her faint air of superiority
(which now included Kitty and so was no longer slightly offensive, but a
bond of union rather) was gently ironic about various persons in the
colony. Kitty began to feel more alert.
"Why, she's looking better already," said Charlie to his wife. "She was
so pale before tiffin that I was quite startled; she's really got some
colour in her cheeks now."
But while she took her part in the conversation, if not with gaiety (for
she felt that neither Dorothy nor Charlie with his admirable sense of
decorum would approve of that) at least with cheerfulness, Kitty
observed her host. In all those weeks during which her fancy had been
revengefully occupied with him she had built up in her mind a very vivid
impression of him. His thick curling hair was a little too long and too
carefully brushed, in order to hide the fact that it was greying there
was too much oil on it; his face was too red, with its network of mauve
veins on the cheeks, and his jowl was too massive: when he did not hold
his head up to hide it you saw that he had a double chin; and there was
something apelike in those bushy grizzled eyebrows of his that vaguely
disgusted her. He was heavy in his movements, and all the care he took
in his diet and all his exercise did not prevent him from being fat; his
bones were much too well covered and his joints had a middle-aged
stiffness. His smart clothes were a little tight for him and a little
too young.
But when he came into the drawing-room before luncheon Kitty received
quite a shock (this perhaps was why her pallor had been so marked), for
she discovered that her imagination had played an odd trick on her: he
did not in the least look as she had pictured him. She could hardly help
laughing at herself. His hair was not grey at all, oh, there were a few
white hairs on the temple but they were becoming; and his face was not
red, but sunburned; his head was very well placed on his neck; and he
wasn't stout and he wasn't old: in fact he was almost slim and his
figure was admirable--could you blame him if he was a trifle vain of
it?--he might have been a young man. And of course he did know how to
wear his clothes; it was absurd to deny that: he looked neat and clean
and trim. Whatever could have possessed her to think him this and that?
He was a very handsome man. It was lucky that she knew how worthless he
was. Of course she had always admitted that his voice had a winning
quality, and his voice was exactly as she remembered it: it made the
falseness of every word he said more exasperating; its richness of tone
and its warmth rang now in her ears with insincerity and she wondered
how she could ever have been taken in by it. His eyes were beautiful:
that was where his charm lay, they had such a soft, blue brilliance and
even when he was talking balderdash an expression which was so
delightful; it was almost impossible not to be moved by them.
At last the coffee was brought in and Charlie lit his cheroot. He looked
at his watch and rose from the table.
"Well, I must leave you two young women to your own devices. It's time
for me to get back to the office." He paused and then with his friendly,
charming eyes on Kitty said to her: "I'm not going to bother you for a
day or two till you're rested, but then I want to have a little business
talk with you."
"With me?"
"We must make arrangements about your house, you know, and then there's
the furniture."
"Oh, but I can go to a lawyer. There's no reason why I should bother you
about that."
"Don't think for a moment I'm going to let you waste your money on legal
expenses. I'm going to see to everything. You know you're entitled to a
pension: I'm going to talk to H. E. about it and see if by making
representations in the proper quarter we can't get something extra for
you. You put yourself in my hands. But don't bother about anything just
yet. All we want you to do now is to get fit and well: isn't that right,
Dorothy?"
"Of course."
He gave Kitty a little nod and then passing by his wife's chair took her
hand and kissed it. Most Englishmen look a little foolish when they kiss
a woman's hand; he did it with a graceful ease.
_lxxiv_