Authors: W. Somerset Maugham
38
It was the day after this that Waddington, coming to the bungalow in the afternoon, when he had sat a little asked Kitty if she would not go for a stroll with him. She had not been out of the compound since their arrival. She was glad enough.
‘There are not many walks, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘But we’ll go to the top of the hill.’
‘Oh, yes, where the archway is. I’ve seen it often from the terrace.’
One of the boys opened the heavy doorway for them and they stepped out into the dusty lane. They walked a few yards and then Kitty, seizing Waddington’s arm in fright, gave a startled cry.
‘Look!’
‘What’s the matter?’
At the foot of the wall that surrounded the compound a man lay on his back with his legs stretched out and his arms thrown over his head. He wore the patched blue rags and the wild mop of hair of the Chinese beggar.
‘He looks as if he were dead,’ Kitty gasped.
‘He is dead. Come along; you’d better look the other way. I’ll have him moved when we come back.’
But Kitty was trembling so violently that she could not stir.
‘I’ve never seen any one dead before.’
‘You’d better hurry up and get used to it then, because you’ll see a good many before you’ve done with this cheerful spot.’
He took her hand and drew it in his arm. They walked for a little in silence.
‘Did he die of cholera?’ she said at last.
‘I suppose so.’
They walked up the hill till they came to the archway. It was richly carved. Fantastic and ironical it stood like a landmark in the surrounding country. They sat down on the pedestal and faced the wide plain. The hill was sown close with the little green mounds of the dead, not in lines but disorderly, so that you felt that beneath the surface they must strangely jostle one another. The narrow causeway meandered sinuously among the green rice-fields. A small boy seated on the neck of a water-buffalo drove it slowly home, and three peasants in wide straw hats lolloped with sidelong gait under their heavy loads. After the heat of the day it was pleasant in that spot to catch the faint breeze of the evening and the wide expanse of country brought a sense of restful melancholy to the tortured heart. But Kitty could not rid her mind of the dead beggar.
‘How can you talk and laugh and drink whisky when people are dying all around you?’ she asked suddenly.
Waddington did not answer. He turned round and looked at her, then he put his hand on her arm.
‘You know, this is no place for a woman,’ he said gravely. ‘Why don’t you go?’
She gave him a sidelong glance from beneath her long lashes and there was the shadow of a smile on her lips.
‘I should have thought under the circumstances a wife’s place was by her husband’s side.’
‘When they telegraphed to me that you were coming with Fane I was astonished. But then it occurred to me that perhaps you’d been a nurse and all this sort of thing was in the day’s work. I expected you to be one of those grim-visaged females who lead you a dog’s life when you’re ill in hospital. You could have knocked me down with a feather when I came into the bungalow and saw you sitting down and resting. You looked very frail and white and tired.’
‘You couldn’t expect me to look my best after nine days on the road.’
‘You look frail and white and tired now, and if you’ll allow me to say so, desperately unhappy.’
Kitty flushed because she could not help it, but she was able to give a laugh that sounded merry enough.
‘I’m sorry you don’t like my expression. The only reason I have for looking unhappy is that since I was twelve I’ve known that my nose was a little too long. But to cherish a secret sorrow is a most effective pose: you can’t think how many sweet young men have wanted to console me.’
Waddington’s blue and shining eyes rested on her and she knew that he did not believe a word she said. She did not care so long as he pretended to.
‘I knew that you hadn’t been married very long and I came to the conclusion that you and your husband were madly in love with each other. I couldn’t believe that he had wished you to come, but perhaps you had absolutely refused to stay behind.’
‘That’s a very reasonable explanation,’ she said lightly.
‘Yes, but it isn’t the right one.’
She waited for him to go on, fearful of what he was about to say, for she had a pretty good idea of his shrewdness and was aware that he never hesitated to speak his mind, but unable to resist the desire to hear him talk about herself.
‘I don’t think for a moment that you re in love with your husband. I think you dislike him, I shouldn’t be surprised if you hated him. But I’m quite sure you’re afraid of him.’
For a moment she looked away. She did not mean to let Waddington see that anything he said affected her.
‘I have a suspicion that you don’t very much like my husband,’ she said with cool irony.
‘I respect him. He has brains and character; and that, I may tell you, is a very unusual combination. I don’t suppose you know what he is doing here, because I don’t think he’s very expansive with you. If any man single-handed can put a stop to this frightful epidemic he’s going to do it. He’s doctoring the sick, cleaning the city up, trying to get the drinking water pure. He doesn’t mind where he goes nor what he does. He’s risking his life twenty times a day. He’s got Colonel Yü in his pocket and he’s induced him to put the troops at his disposal. He’s even put a little pluck into the magistrate and the old man is really trying to do something. And the nuns at the convent swear by him. They think he’s a hero.’
‘Don’t you?’
‘After all this isn’t his job, is it? He’s a bacteriologist. There was no call for him to come here. He doesn’t give me the impression that he’s moved by compassion for all these dying Chinamen. Watson was different. He loved the human race. Though he was a missionary it didn’t make any difference to him if they were Christian, Buddhist or Confucian; they were just human beings. Your husband isn’t here because he cares a damn if a hundred thousand Chinese die of cholera; he isn’t here either in the interests of science. Why is he here?’
‘You’d better ask him.’
‘It interests me to see you together. I sometimes wonder how you behave when you’re alone. When I’m there you’re acting, both of you, and acting damned badly, by George. You’d neither of you get thirty bob a week in a touring company if that’s the best you can do.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ smiled Kitty, keeping up a pretence of frivolity which she knew did not deceive.
‘You’re a very pretty woman. It’s funny that your husband should never look at you. When he speaks to you it sounds as though it were not his voice but somebody else’s.’
‘Do you think he doesn’t love me?’ asked Kitty in a low voice, hoarsely, putting aside suddenly her lightness.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know if you fill him with such a repulsion that it gives him goose-flesh to be near you or if he’s burning with a love that for some reason he will not allow himself to show. I’ve asked myself if you’re both here to commit suicide.’
Kitty had seen the startled glance and then the scrutinising look Waddington gave them when the incident of the salad took place.
‘I think you’re attaching too much importance to a few lettuce leaves,’ she said flippantly. She rose. ‘Shall we go home? I’m sure you want a whisky and soda.’
‘You’re not a heroine at all events. You’re frightened to death. Are you sure you don’t want to go away?’
‘What has it got to do with you?’
‘I’ll help you.’
‘Are
you
going to fall to my look of secret sorrow? Look at my profile and tell me if my nose isn’t a trifle too long.’
He gazed at her reflectively, that malicious, ironical look in his bright eyes, but mingled with it, a shadow, like a tree standing at a river’s edge and its reflection in the water, was an expression of singular kindliness. It brought sudden tears to Kitty’s eyes.
‘Must you stay?’
‘Yes.’
They passed under the flamboyant archway and walked down the hill. When they came to the compound they saw the body of the dead beggar. He took her arm, but she released herself. She stood still.
‘It’s dreadful, isn’t it?’
‘What? Death.’
‘Yes. It makes everything else seem so horribly trivial. He doesn’t look human. When you look at him you can hardly persuade yourself that he’s ever been alive. It’s hard to think that not so very many years ago he was just a little boy tearing down the hill and flying a kite.’
She could not hold back the sob that choked her.
39
A few days later Waddington, sitting with Kitty, a long glass of whisky and soda in his hand, began to speak to her of the convent.
‘The Mother Superior is a very remarkable woman,’ he said. ‘The Sisters tell me that she belongs to one of the greatest families in France, but they won’t tell me which; the Mother Superior, they say, doesn’t wish it to be talked of.’
‘Why don’t you ask her if it interests you?’ smiled Kitty.
‘If you knew her you’d know it was impossible to ask her an indiscreet question.’
‘She must certainly be very remarkable if she can impress you with awe.’
‘I am the bearer of a message from her to you. She has asked me to say that, though of course you may not wish to adventure into the very centre of the epidemic, if you do not mind that it will give her great pleasure to show you the convent.’
‘It’s very kind of her. I shouldn’t have thought she was aware of my existence.’
‘I’ve spoken about you; I go there two or three times a week just now to see if there’s anything I can do; and I daresay your husband has told them about you. You must be prepared to find that they have an unbounded admiration for him.’
‘Are you a Catholic?’
His malicious eyes twinkled and his funny little face was puckered with laughter.
‘Why are you grinning at me?’ asked Kitty.
‘Can any good come out of Galilee? No, I’m not a Catholic. I describe myself as a member of the Church of England, which I suppose is an inoffensive way of saying that you don’t believe in anything very much.... When the Mother Superior came here ten years ago she brought seven nuns with her and of those all but three are dead. You see, at the best of times, Meitan-fu is not a health resort. They live in the very middle of the city, in the poorest district, they work very hard and they never have a holiday.’
‘But are there only three and Mother Superior now?’
‘Oh, no, more have taken their places. There are six of them now. When one of them died of cholera at the beginning of the epidemic two others came up from Canton.’
Kitty shivered a little.
‘Are you cold?’
‘No, it was only some one walking over my grave.’
‘When they leave France they leave it forever. They’re not like the Protestant missionaries who have a year’s leave every now and then. I always think that must be the hardest thing of all. We English have no very strong attachment to the soil, we can make ourselves at home in any part of the world, but the French, I think, have an attachment to their country which is almost a physical bond. They’re never really at ease when they’re out of it. It always seems to me very moving that these women should make just that sacrifice. I suppose if I
were
a Catholic it would seem very natural to me.’
Kitty looked at him coolly. She could not quite understand the emotion with which the little man spoke and she asked herself whether it was a pose. He had drunk a good deal of whisky and perhaps he was not quite sober.
‘Come and see for yourself,’ he said, with his bantering smile, quickly reading her thought. ‘It’s not nearly so risky as eating a tomato.’
‘If you’re not frightened there’s no reason why I should be.’
‘I think it’ll amuse you. It’s like a little bit of France.’
40
They crossed the river in a sampan. A chair was waiting for Kitty at the landing-stage and she was carried up the hill to the water-gate. It was through this that the coolies came to fetch water from the river and they hurried to and fro with huge buckets hanging from the yoke on their shoulder, splashing the causeway so that it was as wet as though it had heavily rained. Kitty’s bearers gave short, sharp cries to urge them to make way.
‘Of course all business is at a standstill,’ said Waddington, walking by her side. ‘Under normal circumstances you have to fight you way through the coolies carrying loads up and down to the junks.’
The street was narrow and winding so that Kitty lost all sense of the direction in which she was going. Many of the shops were closed. She had grown used on the journey up to the untidiness of a Chinese street, but here was the litter of weeks, garbage and refuse; and the stench was so horrible that she had to put her handkerchief to her face. Passing through Chinese cities she had been incommoded by the staring of the crowd, but now she noticed that no more than an indifferent glance was thrown at her. The passers-by, scattered rather than as usual thronging, seemed intent on their own affairs. They were cowed and listless. Now and then as they went by a house they heard the beating of gongs and the shrill, sustained lament of unknown instruments. Behind those closed doors one was lying dead.
‘Here we are,’ said Waddington at last.
The chair was set down at a small doorway, surmounted by a cross, in a long white wall, and Kitty stepped out. He rang the bell.
‘You musn’t expect anything very grand, you know. They’re miserably poor.’
The door was opened by a Chinese girl, and after a word or two from Waddington she led them into a little room on the side of the corridor. It contained a large table covered with a chequered oilcloth and round the walls was a set of stiff chairs. At one end of the room was a statue, in plaster, of the Blessed Virgin. In a moment a nun came in, short and plump, with a homely face, red cheeks and merry eyes. Waddington, introducing Kitty to her, called her Soeur St. Joseph.
‘C’est la dame du docteur
?’ she asked, beaming, and then added that the Mother Superior would join them directly.
Sister St. Joseph could speak no English and Kitty’s French was halting; but Waddington, fluent, voluble and inaccurate, maintained a stream of facetious comment which convulsed the good-humoured nun. Her cheerful, easy laughter not a little astonished Kitty. She had an idea that the religious were always grave and this sweet and childlike merriment touched her.