The Painted Veil (16 page)

56

Kitty was lying on her bed and the shutters were closed. It was after luncheon and the servants slept. What she had learnt that morning (and now she was certain that it was true) filled her with consternation. Ever since she came home she had been trying to think; but her mind was a blank, and she could not collect her thoughts. Suddenly she heard a step, the feet were booted so that it could not be one of the boys; with a gasp of apprehension she realised that it could only be her husband. He was in the sitting-room and she heard herself called. She did not reply. There was a moment’s silence and then a knock on her door.

‘Yes?’

‘May I come in?’

Kitty rose from her bed and slipped into a dressing-gown.

‘Yes.’

He entered. She was glad that the closed shutters shadowed her face.

‘I hope I didn’t wake you. I knocked very, very gently.’

‘I haven’t been asleep.’

He went to one of the windows and threw open the shutter. A flood of warm light streamed into the room.

‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘Why are you back so early?’

‘The Sisters said that you weren’t very well. I thought I had better come and see what was the matter.’

A flash of anger passed through her.

‘What would you have said if it had been cholera?’

‘If it had been you certainly couldn’t have made your way home this morning.’

She went to the dressing-table and passed the comb through her shingled hair. She wanted to gain time. Then, sitting down, she lit a cigarette.

‘I wasn’t very well this morning and the Mother Superior thought I’d better come back here. But I’m perfectly all right again. I shall go to the convent as usual to-morrow.’

‘What was the matter with you?’

‘Didn’t they tell you?’

‘No. The Mother Superior said that you must tell me yourself.’

He did now what he did seldom; he looked her full in the face; his professional instincts were stronger than his personal. She hesitated. Then she forced herself to meet his eyes.

‘I’m going to have a baby,’ she said.

She was accustomed to his habit of meeting with silence a statement which you would naturally expect to evoke an exclamation, but never had it seemed to her more devastating. He said nothing; he made no gesture; no movement on his face nor change of expression in his dark eyes indicated that he had heard. She felt suddenly inclined to cry. If a man loved his wife and his wife loved him, at such a moment they were drawn together by a poignant emotion. The silence was intolerable and she broke it.

‘I don’t know why it never occurred to me before. It was stupid of me, but... what with one thing and another ...’

‘How long have you ... when do you expect to be confined?’

The words seemed to issue from his lips with difficulty. She felt that his throat was as dry as hers. It was a nuisance that her lips trembled so when she spoke; if he was not of stone it must excite his pity.

‘I suppose I’ve been like this between two and three months.’

‘Am I the father?’

She gave a little gasp. There was just a shadow of a tremor in his voice; it was dreadful that cold self-control of his which made the smallest token of emotion so shattering. She did not know why she thought suddenly of an instrument she had been shown in Hong-Kong upon which a needle oscillated a little and she had been told that this represented an earthquake a thousand miles away in which perhaps a thousand persons had lost their lives. She looked at him. He was ghastly pale. She had seen that pallor on him once, twice before. He was looking down, a little sideways.

‘Well?’

She clasped her hands. She knew that if she could say yes it would mean everything in the world to him. He would believe her, of course he would believe her, because he wanted to; and then he would forgive. She knew how deep was his tenderness and how ready he was, for all his shyness, to expend it. She knew that he was not vindictive; he would forgive her if she could but give him an excuse to, an excuse that touched his heart, and he would forgive completely. She could count on him never to throw the past in her teeth. Cruel he might be, cold and morbid, but he was neither mean nor petty. It would alter everything if she said yes.

And she had an urgent need for sympathy. The unexpected knowledge that she was with child had overwhelmed her with strange hopes and unforeseen desires. She felt weak, frightened a little, alone and very far from any friends. That morning, though she cared little for her mother, she had had a sudden craving to be with her. She needed help and consolation. She did not love Walter, she knew that she never could, but at this moment she longed with all her heart for him to take her in his arms so that she could lay her head on his breast; clinging to him she could have cried happily; she wanted him to kiss her and she wanted to twine her arms around his neck.

She began to weep. She had lied so much and she could lie so easily. What could a lie matter when it could only do good? A lie, a lie, what was a lie? It was so easy to say yes. She saw Walter’s eyes melt and his arms outstretched towards her. She couldn’t say it; she didn’t know why, she just couldn’t. All she had gone through during these bitter weeks, Charlie and his unkindness, the cholera and all these people dying, the nuns, oddly enough even that funny, drunken little Waddington, it all seemed to have changed her so that she did not know herself; though she was so deeply moved, some bystander in her soul seemed to watch her with terror and surprise. She
had
to tell the truth. It did not seem worth while to lie. Her thoughts wandered strangely: on a sudden she saw that dead beggar at the foot of the compound wall. Why should she think of him? She did not sob; the tears streamed down her face, quite easily, from wide eyes. At last she answered the question. He had asked her if he was the child’s father.

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

He gave the ghost of a chuckle. It made Kitty shudder.

‘It’s a bit awkward, isn’t it?’

His answer was characteristic, it was exactly what she would have expected him to say, but it made her heart sink. She wondered if he realised how hard it had been for her to tell the truth (at the same moment she recognised that it had not been in the least hard, but inevitable) and if he gave her credit for it. Her answer,
I don’t know, I don’t know
, hammered away in her head. It was impossible now to take it back. She got her handkerchief from her bag and dried her eyes. They did not speak. There was a syphon on the table by her bed and he got her a glass of water. He brought it to her and held the glass while she drank. She noticed how thin his hand was, it was a fine hand, slender, with long fingers, but now it was nothing but skin and bone; it trembled a little: he could control his face, but his hand betrayed him.

‘Don’t mind my crying,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing really; it’s only that I can’t help the water running out of my eyes.’

She drank the water and he put the glass back. He sat down on a chair and lit a cigarette. He gave a little sigh. Once or twice before she had heard him sigh like that and it always gave her a catch at the heart. Looking at him now, for he was staring with abstracted gaze out of the window, she was surprised that she had not noticed before how terribly thin he had grown during the last weeks. His temples were sunken and the bones of his face showed through the skin. His clothes hung on him loosely as though they had been made for a larger man. Through his sunburn his face had a greenish pallor. He looked exhausted. He was working too hard, sleeping little and eating nothing. In her own grief and perturbation she found room to pity him. It was cruel to think that she could do nothing for him.

He put his hand over his forehead, as though his head were aching, and she had a feeling that in his brain too those words hammered madly:
I don’t know, I don’t know
. It was strange that this moody, cold and shy man should have such a natural affection for very little babies; most men didn’t care much even for their own, but the nuns, touched and a little amused, had more than once spoken of it. If he felt like that about those funny little Chinese babies what would he have felt about his own? Kitty bit her lips in order to prevent herself from crying again.

He looked at his watch.

‘I’m afraid I must go back to the city. I have a great deal to do to-day ... Shall you be all right?’

‘Oh, yes. Don’t bother about me.’

‘I think you’d better not wait for me this evening. I may be very late and I’ll get something to eat from Colonel Yü.’

‘Very well.’

He rose.

‘If I were you, I wouldn’t try to do anything to-day. You’d better take it easy. Is there anything you want before I go?’

‘No, thanks. I shall be quite all right.’

He paused for an instant, as though he were undecided, and then, abruptly and without looking at her, took his hat and walked out of the room. She heard him go through the compound. She felt terribly alone. There was no need for self-restraint now and gave herself up to a passion of tears.

57

The night was sultry and Kitty sat at the window looking at the fantastic roofs, dark against the starlight, of the Chinese temple, when at last Walter came in. Her eyes were heavy with weeping, but she was composed. Notwithstanding all there was to harass her she felt, perhaps only from exhaustion, strangely at peace.

‘I thought you’d be already in bed,’ said Walter as he came in.

‘I wasn’t sleepy. I thought it cooler to sit up. Have you had any dinner?’

‘All I want.’

He walked up and down the long room and she saw that he had something to say to her. She knew that he was embarrassed. Without concern she waited for him to summon up his resolution. He began abruptly.

‘I’ve been thinking about what you told me this afternoon. It seems to me that it would be better if you went away. I have spoken to Colonel Yü and he will give you an escort. You could take the amah with you. You will be quite safe.’

‘Where is there for me to go?’

‘You can go to your mother’s.’

‘Do you think she would be pleased to see me?’

He paused for a moment, hesitating, as though for reflection.

‘Then you can go to Hong-Kong.’

‘What should I do there?’

‘You will need a good deal of care and attention. I don’t think it’s fair to ask you to stay here.’

She could not prevent the smile, not only of bitterness but of frank amusement, that crossed her face. She gave him a glance and very nearly laughed.

‘I don’t know why you should be so anxious about my health.’

He came over to the window and stood looking out at the night. There had never been so many stars in the unclouded sky.

‘This isn’t the place for a woman in your condition.’

She looked at him, white in his thin clothes against the darkness; there was something sinister in his fine profile, and yet oddly enough at this moment it excited in her no fear.

‘When you insisted on my coming here did you want it to kill me?’ she asked suddenly.

He was so long answering that she thought he had refused to hear.

‘At first.’

She gave a little shudder, for it was the first time he had admitted his intention. But she bore him no ill will for it. Her feeling surprised herself; there was a certain admiration in it and a faint amusement. She did not quite know why, but suddenly thinking of Charlie Townsend he seemed to her an abject fool.

‘It was a terrible risk you were taking,’ she answered. ‘With your sensitive conscience I wonder if you could ever have forgiven yourself if I had died.’

‘Well, you haven’t. You’ve thrived on it.’

‘I’ve never felt better in my life.’

She had an instinct to throw herself on the mercy of his humour. After all they had gone through, when they were living amid these scenes of horror and desolation, it seemed inept to attach importance to the ridiculous act of fornication. When death stood round the comer, taking lives like a gardener digging up potatoes, it was foolishness to care what dirty things this person or that did with his body. If she could only make him realise how little Charlie meant to her, so that now already she had difficulty in calling up his features to her imagination, and how entirely the love of him had passed out of her heart! Because she had no feeling for Townsend the various acts she had committed with him had lost their significance. She had regained her heart and what she had given of her body seemed not to matter a rap. She was inclined to say to Walter: ‘Look here, don’t you think we’ve been silly long enough? We’ve sulked with one another like children. Why can’t we kiss and be friends. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be friends just because we’re not lovers.’

He stood very still and the lamplight made the pallor of his impassive face startling. She did not trust him; if she said the wrong thing he would turn upon her with such an icy sternness. She knew by now his extreme sensitiveness, for which his acid irony was a protection, and how quickly he could close his heart if his feelings were hurt. She had a moment’s irritation at his stupidity. Surely what troubled him most was the wound to his vanity: she vaguely realised that this is the hardest of all wounds to heal. It was singular that men attached so much importance to their wives’ faithfulness; when first she had gone with Charlie she had expected to feel quite different, a changed woman; but she had seemed to herself exactly the same, she had experienced only wellbeing and a greater vitality. She wished now that she had been able to tell Walter that the child was his; the lie would have meant so little to her, and the assurance would have been so great a comfort to him. And after all it might not be a lie: it was funny, that something in her heart which had prevented her from giving herself the benefit of the doubt. How silly men were! Their part in procreation was so unimportant; it was the woman who carried the child through long months of uneasiness and bore it with pain, and yet a man because of his momentary connection made such preposterous claims. Why should that make any difference to him in his feeling towards the child? Then Kitty’s thoughts wandered to the child which she herself would bear; she thought of it not with emotion nor with a passion of maternity, but with an idle curiosity.

‘I daresay you’d like to think it over a little,’ said Walter, breaking the long silence.

‘Think what?’

He turned a little as if he were surprised.

‘About when you want to go?’

‘But I don’t want to go.’

‘Why not?’

‘I like my work at the convent. I think I’m making myself useful. I should prefer to stay as long as you do.’

‘I think I should tell you that in your present condition you are probably more liable to catch any infection that happens to be about.’

‘I like the discreet way you put it,’ she smiled ironically.

‘You’re not staying for my sake?’

She hesitated. He little knew that now the strongest emotion he excited in her, and the most unexpected, was pity.

‘No. You don’t love me. I often think I rather bore you.’

‘I shouldn’t have thought you were the sort of person to put yourself out for a few stuffy nuns and a parcel of Chinese brats.’

Her lips outlined a smile.

‘I think it’s rather unfair to despise me so much because you made such a mistake in your judgment of me. It’s not my fault that you were such an ass.’

‘If you’re determined to stay you are of course at liberty to do so.’

‘I’m sorry I can’t give you the opportunity of being magnanimous.’ She found it strangely hard to be quite serious with him. ‘As a matter of fact you’re quite right, it’s not only for the orphans that I’m staying: you see, I’m in the peculiar position that I haven’t got a soul in the world that I can go to. I know no one who wouldn’t think me a nuisance. I know no one who cares a row of pins if I’m alive or dead.’

He frowned. But he did not frown in anger.

‘We have made a dreadful hash of things, haven’t we?’ he said.

‘Do you still want to divorce me? I don’t think I care any more.’

‘You must know that by bringing you here I’ve condoned the offence.’

‘I didn’t know. You see, I haven’t made a study of infidelity. What are we going to do then when we leave here? Are we going on living together?’

‘Oh, don’t you think we can let the future take care of itself?’

There was the weariness of death in his voice.