The Keys of the Kingdom (38 page)

‘She has broken at last.’ Martha’s words seemed constricted in her throat. ‘Blessed Virgin, did you hear her weep last night?’

Clotilde stood twisting an end of linen in her hands. ‘ Perhaps she has news of a great German defeat we have not heard of yet.’

‘Yes, yes … it is something terrible.’ Martha’s face suddenly puckered up. ‘Truly, if she were not an accursed Boche I would feel almost sorry for her.’

‘I have never known her to weep before.’ Clotilde meditated, her fingers twisting indecisively. ‘She is a proud woman. That must make it doubly hard.’

‘Pride goeth before a fall. Would she have had sympathy for us if we had yielded first? Nevertheless I must admit – Bah! Let us continue with our ironing.’

Early on Sunday morning a small cavalcade approached the mission, winding downwards from the mountains. Advised by Joseph of its arrival, Father Chisholm hastened to the lodge to welcome Liu-Chi and his three companions from the Liu village. He clasped the old shepherd’s hands as though he would never let them go.

‘This is true kindness. The good God will bless you for it.’ Liu-Chi smiled, naively pleased by the warmth of his reception. ‘We would have come sooner. But we took much time to collect the ponies.’

There were perhaps thirty of the short shaggy uplands ponies, bridled but unsaddled, with big double panniers strapped upon their backs. They were contentedly munching the swathes of dried grass strewn for them. The priest’s heart lifted. He pressed the four men to the refreshments which Joseph’s wife had already prepared in the lodge, told them they must rest when they had eaten.

He found Reverend Mother in the linen room silently passing out fresh white bundles of the week’s requirements: tablecloths, sheets and towels, to Martha, Clotilde and one of the senior students. He no longer attempted to conceal his satisfaction.

‘I must prepare you for a change. Because of the threat of famine we are moving to the Liu village. You’ll find plenty there, I assure you.’ He smiled. ‘Sister Martha, you’ll find many ways of cooking mountain mutton before you return. I know you will enjoy the experience. And for the children … it will be a fine holiday.’

There was a moment’s sheer surprise. Then Martha and Clotilde both smiled, conscious of a coming break in the monotony of life, already stirring to the excitement of the adventure.

‘Doubtless you will expect us to be organized in five minutes,’ Martha grumbled amiably, casting her eye instructively, for the first time in many weeks, upon Reverend Mother, as if for her approval.

It was the first faint gesture of atonement. But Maria-Veronica, standing by, with a colourless face, gave no answering sign.

‘Yes, you must look sharp.’ Father Chisholm spoke almost gaily. ‘The little ones will be packed into the panniers. The others must take turns of walking and riding. The nights are warm and fine. Liu-Chi will look after you. If you leave today you should reach the village in a week.’

Clotilde giggled. ‘We shall be like one of the tribes of Egypt.’

The priest nodded. ‘I am giving Joseph a basket of my fantails. Every evening he must release one to bring me a message of your progress.’

‘What!’ Martha and Clotilde exclaimed together. ‘You are not coming with us?’

‘I may follow at a later date.’ Francis felt happy that they should want him. ‘You see, someone must remain at the mission. Reverend Mother and you two will be the pioneers.’

Maria-Veronica said slowly: ‘I cannot go.’

There was a silence.

At first he thought it a continuation of her pique, a disinclination to accompany the other two, but one glance at her face told him otherwise.

He said persuasively: ‘It will be a pleasant trip. The change would do you good.’

She shook her head slowly. ‘I shall be obliged to take a longer trip … quite soon.’

There was a longer pause. Then standing very still, she spoke with a toneless lack of emotion. ‘I must return to Germany … to see about the disposal … to our order . . of my estate.’ She gazed into the distance. ‘My brother has been killed in action.’

The previous silence had been deep, but now there was a mortal stillness. It was Clotilde who burst into violent tears. Then Martha, as though trapped, like an animal, hung her head unwillingly, in sympathy. Father Chisholm glanced from one to the other, in deep distress, then walked silently away.

A fortnight after the party had arrived at Liu the day of Maria-Veronica’s departure was, incredibly, upon him. The latest information from the village, received by pigeon post, indicated that the children were primitively yet comfortably billeted, and wild with health in the keen high air. Father Chisholm had good reason to congratulate himself upon his own resourcefulness. Yet as he walked beside Maria-Veronica to the landing steps, preceded by two bearers with long poles, supporting her baggage upon their shoulders, he felt a desperate forlornness.

They stood on the jetty while the men placed the bundles in the sampan. Behind them the city lay, murmuring in still dejection. Before them, in mid-river, lay the outgoing junk. The dun water which lapped its hull reached out to a grey horizon.

He could find no words to express himself. She had meant so much to him, this gracious and distinguished woman, with her help, encouragement, and comradeship. The future had stretched before them, indefinitely, a future filled with their work together. Now she was going, unexpectedly, almost furtively, it seemed, in a haze of darkness and confusion.

He sighed, at last, giving her his troubled smile. ‘ Even if my country remains at war with yours … remember … I am not your enemy.’

The understatement was so like him, and all that she admired in him, it shook her determination to be strong. As she gazed at his spare figure, gaunt face and thinning hair, tears clouded her beautiful eyes.

‘My dear … dear friend … I will never forget you.’

She gave him her warm firm clasp and stepped quickly into the little craft which would take her to the junk.

He stood there, leaning on his old tartan umbrella, his eyes screwed against the water’s glitter, until the vessel was a speck, floating, vanishing beyond the rim of the sky.

Unknown to her, he had placed amongst her baggage the little antique figure of the Spanish Virgin which Father Tarrant had given him. It was his sole possession of any value. She had often admired it.

He turned and slowly plodded home. In the garden which she had made and loved so much, he paused, grateful for the silence and the peace there. The scent of lilies was in the air. Old Fu, the gardener, his sole companion in the deserted mission, was pruning the azalea bushes with gentle, inquiring hands. He felt worn-out by all that he had lately undergone. A chapter in his life was ended: for the first time, he dimly sensed that he was growing old. He seated himself on the bench beneath the banyan tree, rested his elbows on the pinewood table she had placed there. Old Fu, pruning the azaleas, pretended not to see him as, after a moment, he laid his head upon his arms.

The broad leaves of the banyan tree still shaded him as he sat at the garden table turning the pages of his journal with hands which, as by some strange illusion, were veined and vaguely tremulous. Of course, old Fu no longer watched him, unless through a chink of heaven. Instead, two young gardeners bent by the azalea bed while Father Chou, his Chinese priest, small, gentle and demure, pacing with his breviary at a respectful distance, kept a warm brown filial eye upon him.

In the August sunshine the mission compound was aquiver with dry light, like the sparkle of a golden wine. From the playground the happy shouts of the children at their playtime told him the forenoon hour: eleven o’clock. His children, or rather, he corrected himself wryly, his children’s children … How unfairly time had flashed across him, tumbling the years into his lap, one upon another, too fast for him to marshal them.

A jolly red face, plump and smiling, swam into his abstracted vision, above a tumblerful of milk. He forced a frown as Mother Mercy Mary drew near, annoyed to be reminded of his age by another of her coddling tricks. He was only sixty-seven … well, sixty-eight next month … a mere nothing … and fitter than any youngster.

‘Haven’t I told you not to bring me that stuff?’

She smiled soothingly – vigorous, bustling, and matronly. ‘You need it today, Father, if you will insist on taking that long unnecessary trip.’ She paused. ‘I don’t see why Father Chou and Dr Fiske couldn’t go themselves?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘No, indeed.’

‘Dear Sister, that’s too bad. Your mind must be breaking up.’ She laughed indulgently and tried to coax him.

‘Shall I tell Joshua you’ve decided not to go?’

‘Tell him to have the ponies saddled in an hour.’

He saw her depart, shaking her head reproachfully. He smiled again, with the dry triumph of a man who has had his way. Then, sipping his milk, without, now that she was gone, the necessity of a grimace, he resumed his leisured perusal of the diary before him. It was a habit into which he had lately fallen, a kind of wilful retrospection, evoked by turning the frayed and dog-eared pages at random.

This morning it opened, strangely, first at the date
October 1917.

‘Despite the improving conditions in Pai-tan, the good rice crop and the safe homecoming of my little ones from Liu, I have been downcast lately; yet today a simple incident gave me preposterous happiness.

‘I had been away for four days at the annual conference which the Prefect Apostolic has thought fit to institute at Sen-siang. As the farthest outpost of the Vicariate I had fancied myself immune from such junketings. Indeed, we missioners are so widely scattered and so few – only Father Surette, poor Thibodeau’s successor, the three Chek-kow Chinese priests and Father Van Dwyn the Dutchman from Rakai – that the occasion seemed scarcely worth the long river journey. But there we were “exchanging viewpoints”. And naturally I talked indiscreetly against “ aggressive Christianizing methods”, got hot under the collar and quoted Mr Pao’s cousin: “You missionaries walk in with your Gospel and walk off with our land.” I fell into disgrace with Father Surette, a bustling Father who rejoices in his muscles, which he has used to destroy all the pleasant little Buddhist wayside shrines within twenty li of Sen-siang, and who in addition claims the amazing record of 50,000 pious ejaculations in one day.

‘On my return trip I was overcome with remorse. How often have I had to write in this journal: ‘ Failed again, Dear Lord, help me restrain my tongue!’ And they thought me such a queer fish at Sen-siang!

‘To mortify myself I had dispensed with a cabin on the boat. Next to me on deck was a man with a cage of prime rats which he dined on, progressively, under my jaundiced eye. In addition it rained hard, blew down streams and I was, as I deserved to be, extremely sick.

‘Then, as I stepped off the vessel at Pai-tan, more dead than alive, I found an old woman waiting for me on the drenched deserted jetty. As she approached I saw her to be my friend, old mother Hsu, she who cooked beans in the milk-can in the compound. She is the poorest, the lowest person in my parish.

‘To my amazement her face was illuminated at the sight of me. Quickly she told me she had missed me so much she had stood there in the rain these past three afternoons, waiting my arrival. She produced six little ceremonial cakes of rice flour and sugar, not for eating – the kind they place before the images of Buddha – the same images that Father Surette knocks down. A comic gesture … But the joy of knowing that to one person at least one is dear … and indispensable …

‘
May 1918.
This lovely morning my first batch of young settlers departed for Liu, twenty-four in all, – I might discreetly add, twelve of each kind, – amidst great enthusiasm and many knowing nods and practical admonitions from our good Reverend Mother Mercy Mary. Though I resented her coming intensely – weighing her sulkily against the memory of Maria-Veronica – she is a fine, capable, cheerful person, and for a holy nun she has an amazing insight into the exigencies of the marriage bed.

‘Old Meg Paxton, the Cannelgate fishwife, used to reassure me that I wasn’t such a fool as I looked; and I’m quite proud of my inspiration to colonize Liu – with the finest produce of this mission of St Andrew’s. There simply aren’t enough jobs here for my growing-up young people. It would seem the worst kind of stupidity, having pulled them out of the gutter, to throw them back again, benevolently, now they are educated. And Liu itself will profit by an infusion of fresh blood. There is ample land, a stirring climate. Once the numbers are adequate I shall establish a young priest there. Anselm must send me one, until he does so I shall deafen him with my importunities …

‘I am tired tonight from the excitement and the ceremonies – these mass marriages are no joke, and Chinese ceremonial oratory leaves the vocal chords in ruins. Perhaps my depression is reactionary, perhaps physical. I do need a holiday quite badly, I am a little stale. The Fiskes have gone off for their routine six months’ rest, to visit their son, now established in Virginia. I miss them. Their relief, the Reverend Ezra Salkins, makes me realize how fortunate I am to have such sweet and gentle neighbours. Shang-Foo Ezra is neither – a big man with a fixed beam, a Rotarian handshake, and a smile like melting lard. He boomed at me as he cracked my fingerbones: “Anything I can do to help you, brother, anything at all.”

‘The Fiskes would be my honoured guests at Liu. But to Ezra I am dumb. In just sixty seconds he would have Father Ribiero’s tomb plastered with bill-heads:
Brother are you saved?
Oh, blow! I am crabbed and sour, it’s that plum pie Mercy Mary made me eat at the wedding breakfast …

‘I have been made truly happy by a long letter dated June 10th, 1922 from Mother Maria-Veronica. After many vicissitudes, the trials of the war and the humiliations of the armistice, she has at last been rewarded by her appointment as Superior of the Sistine Convent in Rome. This is the mother house of her order, a find old foundation on the high slopes between the Corso and the Quirinal overlooking the Saporelli and the lovely church of Santi Apostoli. It is an office of the first importance but no more than she deserves. She seems contented … at peace. Her letter brings me such a fragrance of the Holy City – that might be one of Anselm’s phrases! – always the object of my tender longings, I have dared to make a plan. When my sick-leave, already twice postponed, does arrive, what is to prevent my visiting Rome, wearing my boots out on the mosaics of St Peter’s, and seeing Mother Maria-Veronica in the bargain? When I wrote in April congratulating Anselm on his appointment as Rector of the Tynecastle Cathedral Church he assured me, in his reply, that I should have an assistant priest within six months and my ‘much-needed vacation’ before the year was out.