The Painted Veil (15 page)

53

Since she had been working at the convent Kitty had seen less of Waddington. Two or three times he had come down to the river bank to meet her and they had walked up the hill together. He came in to drink a whisky and soda, but he would seldom stay to dinner. One Sunday, however, he suggested that they should take their luncheon with them and go in chairs to a Buddhist monastery. It was situated ten miles from the city and had some reputation as a place of pilgrimage. The Mother Superior, insisting that Kitty must have a day’s rest, would not let her work on Sundays and Walter of course was as busy then as usual.

They started early in order to arrive before the heat of the day and were carried along a narrow causeway between rice-fields. Now and then they passed comfortable farm-houses nestling with friendly intimacy in a grove of bamboos. Kitty enjoyed the idleness; it was pleasant after being cooped up in the city to see about her the wide country. They came to the monastery, straggling low buildings by the side of the river, agreeably shaded by trees, and were led by smiling monks throughout courtyards, empty with a solemn emptiness, and shown temples with grimacing gods. In the sanctuary sat the Buddha, remote and sad, wistful, abstracted and faintly smiling. There was about everything a sense of dejection; the magnificence was shoddy and ruined; the gods were dusty and the faith that had made them was dying. The monks seemed to stay on sufferance, as though they awaited a notice to quit; and in the smile of the abbot, with his beautiful politeness, was the irony of resignation. One of these days the monks would wander away from the shady, pleasant wood, and the buildings, crumbling and neglected, would be battered by fierce storms and besieged by the surrounding nature. Wild creepers would twine themselves about the dead images and the trees would grow in the courtyards. Then the gods would dwell there no longer, but evil spirits of darkness.

54

They sat on the steps of a little building (four lacquered columns and a high, tiled roof under which stood a great bronze bell) and watched the river flow sluggish and with many a bend towards the stricken city. They could see its crenellated walls. The heat hung over it like a pall. But the river, though it flowed so slowly, had still a sense of movement and it gave one a melancholy feeling of the transitoriness of things. Everything passed, and what trace of its passage remained? It seemed to Kitty that they were all, the human race, like the drops of water in that river and they flowed on, each so close to the other and yet so far apart, a nameless flood, to the sea. When all things lasted so short a time and nothing mattered very much, it seemed pitiful that men, attaching an absurd importance to trivial objects, should make themselves and one another so unhappy.

‘Do you know Harrington Gardens?’ she asked Waddington, with a smile in her beautiful eyes.

‘No. Why?’

‘Nothing; only it’s a long way from here. It’s where my people live.’

‘Are you thinking of going home?’

‘No.’

‘I suppose you’ll be leaving here in a couple of months. The epidemic seems to be abating and the cool weather should see the end of it.’

‘I almost think I shall be sorry to go.’

For a moment she thought of the future. She did not know what plans Walter had in mind. He told her nothing. He was cool, polite, silent and inscrutable. Two little drops in that river that flowed silently towards the unknown; two little drops that to themselves had so much individuality and to the onlooker were but an undistinguishable part of the water.

‘Take care the nuns don’t start converting you,’ said Waddington, with his malicious little smile.

‘They’re much too busy. Nor do they care. They’re wonderful and so kind; and yet – I hardly know how to explain it – there is a wall between them and me. I don’t know what it is. It is as though they possessed a secret which made all the difference in their lives and which I was unworthy to share. It is not faith; it is something deeper and more – more significant: they walk in a different world from ours and we shall always be strangers to them. Each day when the convent door closes behind me I feel that for them I have ceased to exist.’

‘I can understand that it is something of a blow to your vanity,’ he returned mockingly.

‘My vanity.’

Kitty shrugged her shoulders. Then, smiling once more, she turned to him lazily.

‘Why did you never tell me that you lived with a Manchu princess?’

‘What have those gossiping old women been telling you? I am sure that it is a sin for nuns to discuss the private affairs of the Customs officials.’

‘Why should you be so sensitive?’

Waddington glanced down, sideways, so that it gave him an air of slyness. He faintly shrugged his shoulders.

‘It’s not a thing to advertise. I do not know that it would greatly add to my chances of promotion in the service.’

‘Are you very fond of her?’

He looked up now and his ugly little face had the look of a naughty schoolboy’s.

‘She’s abandoned everything for my sake, home, family, security and self-respect. It’s a good many years now since she threw everything to the winds to be with me. I’ve sent her away two or three times, but she’s always come back; I’ve run away from her myself, but she’s always followed me. And now I’ve given it up as a bad job; I think I’ve got to put up with her for the rest of my life.’

‘She must really love you to distraction.’

‘It’s a rather funny sensation, you know,’ he answered, wrinkling a perplexed forehead. ‘I haven’t the smallest doubt that if I really left her, definitely, she would commit suicide. Not with any ill-feeling towards me, but quite naturally, because she was unwilling to live without me. It is a curious feeling it gives one to know that. It can’t help meaning something to you.’

‘But it’s loving that’s the important thing, not being loved. One’s not even grateful to the people who love one; if one doesn’t love them, they only bore one.’

‘I have no experience of the plural,’ he replied. ‘Mine is only in the singular.’

‘Is she really an Imperial Princess?’

‘No, that is a romantic exaggeration of the nuns. She belongs to one of the great families of the Manchus, but they have, of course, been ruined by the revolution. She is all the same a very great lady.’

He said it in a tone of pride, so that a smile flickered in Kitty’s eyes.

‘Are you going to stay here for the rest of your life then?’

‘In China? Yes. What would she do elsewhere? When I retire I shall take a little Chinese house in Peking and spend the rest of my days there.’

‘Have you any children?’

‘No.’

She looked at him curiously. It was strange that this little bald-headed man with his monkey face should have aroused in the alien woman so devastating a passion. She could not tell why the way he spoke of her, notwithstanding his casual manner and his flippant phrases, gave her the impression so strongly of the woman’s intense and unique devotion. It troubled her a little.

‘It does seem a long way to Harrington Gardens,’ she smiled.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘I don’t understand anything. Life is so strange. I feel like some one who’s lived all his life by a duck-pond and suddenly is shown the sea. It makes me a little breathless, and yet it fills me with elation. I don’t want to die, I want to live. I’m beginning to feel a new courage. I feel like one of those old sailors who set sail for undiscovered seas and I think my soul hankers for the unknown.’

Waddington looked at her reflectively. Her abstracted gaze rested on the smoothness of the river. Two little drops that flowed silently, silently towards the dark, eternal sea.

‘May I come and see the Manchu lady?’ asked Kitty, suddenly raising her head.

‘She can’t speak a word of English.’

‘You’ve been very kind to me, you’ve done a great deal for me, perhaps I could show her by my manner that I had a friendly feeling towards her.’

Waddington gave a thin, mocking little smile, but he answered with good-humour.

‘I will come and fetch you one day and she shall give you a cup of jasmine tea.’

She would not tell him that this story of an alien love had from the first moment strangely intrigued her fancy, and the Manchu Princess stood now as the symbol of something that vaguely, but insistently, beckoned to her. She pointed enigmatically to a mystic land of the spirit.

55

But a day or two later Kitty made an unforeseen discovery.

She went to the convent as usual and set about her first work of seeing that the children were washed and dressed. Since the nuns held firmly that the night air was harmful, the atmosphere in the dormitory was close and fetid. After the freshness of the morning it always made Kitty a little uncomfortable and she hastened to open such windows as would. But to-day she felt all of a sudden desperately sick and with her head swimming she stood at the window trying to compose herself. It had never been as bad as this before. Then nausea overwhelmed her and she vomited. She gave a cry so that the children were frightened, and the older girl who was helping her ran up and, seeing Kitty white and trembling, stopped short with an exclamation. Cholera! The thought flashed through Kitty’s mind and then a deathlike feeling came over her; she was seized with terror, she struggled for a moment against the night that seemed agonisingly to run through her veins; she felt horribly ill; and then darkness.

When she opened her eyes she did not at first know where she was. She seemed to be lying on the floor and, moving her head slightly, she thought that there was a pillow under it. She could not remember. The Mother Superior was kneeling by her side, holding smelling salts to her nose, and Sister St. Joseph stood looking at her. Then it came back. Cholera! She saw the consternation on the nuns’ faces. Sister St. Joseph looked huge and her outline was blurred. Once more terror overwhelmed her.

‘Oh, Mother, Mother,’ she sobbed. ‘Am I going to die? I don’t want to die.’

‘Of course you’re not going to die,’ said the Mother Superior.

She was quite composed and there was even amusement in her eyes.

‘But it’s cholera. Where’s Walter? Has he been sent for? Oh, Mother, Mother.’

She burst into a flood of tears. The Mother Superior gave her hand and Kitty seized it as though it were a hold upon the life she feared to lose.

‘Come, come, my dear child, you mustn’t be so silly. It’s not cholera or anything bf the kind.’

‘Where’s Walter?’

‘Your husband is much too busy to be troubled. In five minutes you’ll be perfectly well.’

Kitty looked at her with staring, harassed eyes. Why did she take it so calmly? It was cruel.

‘Keep perfectly quiet for a minute,’ said the Mother Superior. ‘There is nothing to alarm yourself about.’

Kitty felt her heart beat madly. She had grown so used to the thought of cholera that it had ceased to seem possible that she could catch it. Oh, the fool she had been! She knew she was going to die. She was frightened. The girls brought in a long rattan chair and placed it by the window.

‘Come, let us lift you,’ said the Mother Superior. ‘You will be more comfortable on the
chaise longue
. Do you think you can stand?’

She put her hands under Kitty’s arms and Sister St. Joseph helped her to her feet. She sank exhausted into the chair.

‘I had better shut the window,’ said Sister St. Joseph. ‘The early morning air cannot be good for her.’

‘No, no,’ said Kitty. ‘Please leave it open.’

It gave her confidence to see the blue sky. She was shaken, but certainly she began to feel better. The two nuns looked at her for a moment in silence, and Sister St. Joseph said something to the Mother Superior which she could not understand. Then the Mother Superior sat on the side of the chair and took her hand.

‘Listen,
ma chère enfant
...’

She asked her one or two questions. Kitty answered them without knowing what they meant. Her lips were trembling so that she could hardly frame the words.

‘There is no doubt about it,’ said Sister St. Joseph. ‘I am not one to be deceived in such a matter.’

She gave a little laugh in which Kitty seemed to discern a certain excitement and not a little affection. The Mother Superior, still holding Kitty’s hand, smiled with soft tenderness.

‘Sister St. Joseph has more experience of these things than I have, dear child, and she said at once what was the matter with you. She was evidently quite right.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Kitty anxiously.

‘It is quite evident. Did the possibility of such a thing never occur to you? You are with child, my dear.’

The start that Kitty gave shook her from head to foot, and she put her feet to the ground as though to spring up.

‘Lie still, lie still,’ said the Mother Superior.

Kitty felt herself blush furiously and she put her hands to her breasts.

‘It’s impossible. It isn’t true.’

‘Qu’est ce qu’elle dit?’
asked Sister St. Joseph.

The Mother Superior translated. Sister St. Joseph’s broad simple face, with its red cheeks, was beaming.

‘No mistakes is possible. I give you my word of honour.’

‘How long have you been married, my child?’ asked the Mother Superior. ‘Why, when my sister-in-law had been married as long as you she had already two babies.’

Kitty sank back into the chair. There was death in her heart.

‘I’m so ashamed,’ she whispered.

‘Because you are going to have a baby? Why, what can be more natural?’

‘Quelle joie pour le docteur,’
said Sister St. Joseph.

‘Yes, think what a happiness for your husband. He will be overwhelmed with joy. You have only to see him with babies, and the look on his face when he plays with them, to see how enchanted he will be to have one of his own.’

For a little while Kitty was silent. The two nuns looked at her with tender interest and the Mother Superior stroked her hand.

‘It was silly of me not to have suspected it before,’ said Kitty. ‘At all events I’m glad it’s not cholera. I feel very much better. I will get back to my work.’

‘Not to-day, my dear child. You have had a shock, you had much better go home and rest yourself.’

‘No, no, I would much rather stay and work.’

‘I insist. What would our good doctor say if I let you be imprudent? Come to-morrow, if you like, or the day after, but to-day you must be quiet. I will send for a chair. Would you like me to let one of our young girls go with you?’

‘Oh, no, I shall be all right alone.’