Читать книгу A Wind from the Wilderness - Mary Gaunt - Страница 5

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NOON PRAYER

"Wherever you are

Work for your soul's sake,

That all the clay of you, all of the dross of you

May yield to the fire of you."

ONE thing never ceases to astonish me, and that is the amazing tolerance of these Chinese we are for ever striving to convert to our own petty little cramped ways. Can you imagine the mayor of a town in New England, for instance, presenting to a foreign and alien faith a large piece of ground for their occupation, with leave to preach the faith which he himself looked upon with mild contempt? I must confess I can't, and yet that is exactly what the elders of the little city of Yang Cheng had done to the American mission which wished to establish itself in their midst. A dozen years before I came upon the scene they had presented to Mr. Wright, for whom they had a great respect, a goodly piece of ground, and the missionaries have erected half a dozen houses, a boys' school, a girls' school, a hospital and a church. The compound has been nicely planted with trees, and on this winter's day the sunshine turned it into fairyland. Through the night there had been heavy snow, but with the dawn had come a fall in the temperature, and now at noontide overhead was a cloudless blue sky, the crisp dry air crackled with frost, and the avenue of water chestnuts, which ran the whole length of the compound from one side of the encircling wall of grey brick to the other, sparkled in a dress of white and silver. Nowhere in the world I should think is winter more glorious than in Northern China. The brilliant sun streaming through the leafless branches caught the frost blossoms, and every little twig was laden with diamonds that reflected light from a thousand facets. On the pure white ground the interlaced branches cast intricate shadows only a little blurred by the faint mist that hung like a halo round each tree. It was entrancing beyond words. Even MacTavish came under the spell and he raced along ahead of us two muffled women, and every now and then flung himself joyfully into the heaped dry snow that the careful gardener had swept up along the borders of the bricked pathways, and however unsatisfactory I found the world, I couldn't help taking pleasure in his pleasure. However sorry I am for other people's troubles I cannot help enjoying myself when the means for enjoyment comes along. I haven't decided whether it's callousness or a merciful provision of providence. It's the same with my own troubles. Twice you'd think I'd been crushed to the ground, and yet whenever it got the chance there was something in me popping up and forgetting all about the slights and enjoying itself thoroughly. It does sound hard. There are those poor women suffering the agonies of the damned, millions of them, though I can only think of the few hundreds who have come my way, and yet here I was, as usual, forgetting all about them and enjoying the lovely day. Well, I'd done the best I could for them and I suppose the lovely day was meant to be enjoyed.

I can't understand—Oh hang! Those wretched women! And even the good looks that they set such store by don't last long. They're most of them bald, and the poor unfortunates try and disguise it with a black muslin patch fitted into the horn into which the scanty hairs are gathered, or worse still, by painting the bald surface with some sticky shiny black substance, for all the world like black enamel.

"And yet they like abundant hair, though they do pluck the bride's forehead," I found myself saying aloud, for I wanted to talk to Mrs. Wright, and she never by any chance originated a conversation.

"Opening the face," said the minister, joining us; "there you've gotten the reason for the baldness, if that's what's worritin' you. The rest of the hair kinder gets discouraged and gives it up as a bad job."

The other members of the mission trooped into prayers. There was Miss Lodham, a sensible middle-aged woman, Sister Luella Lawson, who had had charge of the hospital before I came on the scene; there was that promising evangelist, the widow of Luella's brother, and her little daughter Sadie. Henry Maitland, the men's evangelist and the teacher in the boys' school, was away the other side of the city, and I was thankful. Henry Maitland I never can stand. There is something unctuous about him that displeases me. Sister Luella and Sister Ednah are a bit trying. They are both so perturbed about the souls of the heathen around, that the needs, the very crying needs of this life are in great danger of being entirely overlooked. Sister Luella is a trained nurse and a very good trained nurse when her extraordinary religion does not clash with her duties, which unluckily it very often does. How can she expect a wretched woman suffering not only the pain of bound feet but the pain of all the other physical ills it brings in its train, to be happy, because Sister Luella tells her God loves her, loves her so much that, according to Sister Luella, if she does not love Him in return He will condemn her to everlasting punishment. Oh! it's a sweet faith! So rational and reasonable! When Sister Luella is a nurse, pure and simple, I love her for her efficiency; but when she is on the religious tack—oh, Lord!

How can Martin Conant associate himself with these people? How can he? And he has been here quite a long time. I should have thought the first week would have disillusioned him.

To-day the minute I entered the sitting-room I saw that something was the matter with him. He isn't generally occupied with himself. That isn't his trouble. He is given to thinking about others, about me sometimes, though it is in a detached impersonal way. In passing I put it on record I believe I like men not to be so impersonal.

He was disturbed. As we three entered the room he came forward holding a letter in his hand, and it was evident he was deeply moved.

"Mr. Wright! I must go back! At once! To-night! Where can I get pack-mules?"

"Pack-mules," repeated the minister, who has not always been a minister, but found religion late in life, after a career which seems to have embraced many walks in life, from captain of a Yankee sealing schooner in the Behring Sea to an omnibus driver in Piccadilly; "what the howling hyenas are you spouting about?" Only occasionally when he remembers his high office does he seek words that he considers suitable to his position.

"I must go—go," repeated Mr. Conant. "Good God! I've been here too long."

Of course he has. If it were my country that was fighting, right or wrong, and Britain is certainly right, do you think I would have come away and buried myself in a Chinese mission station? No, indeed! He has taken a long while to discover where his duty lies. Listening to his troubled words we gathered that he has had a letter from Colonel Conant, his father, and the letter was written in sorrow and shame.

"I must go," he said, and to my great surprise he brought his hand down upon the table and swore aloud. I looked at him. Oh, yes, I know I swear myself, but I don't belong to the missionary trade; a missionary, especially one like Martin Conant, hasn't a right to swear.

"Oh, choke off the hot air," said the minister serenely. "What's the hurry?"

"I must go to the war. I want to join up!"

"You sorter passed up that chance I guess," said Mr. Wright, still unmoved, "when you come up here."

We were all looking at him, and I'm afraid I was laughing a little.

"You are a man of peace," Sister Luella reminded him solemnly, and I began to feel more sympathetic; "what have you to do with wars and rumours of wars? You have laid hold of the skirt of——"

Mr. Conant interrupted her. He knew what was coming, and he didn't like it.

"I tell you I must go," he said doggedly, and he addressed the minister, because I was sure he felt that if he looked at Sister Luella he would never be able to resist taking her by the shoulders and shaking her. I've felt the same way myself towards Henry Maitland. "I—must—go—to-night." And he emphasized every word.

"Bless you, don't worry," said the gentleman addressed, calmly; "if it's a scrimmage you're hankering after, you'll get it here if you hang on long enough. I've come through two risin's and three robber bands, an' the revolution, an' thinkin' on 'em sorter comforts me when I'm threatened with the Willies. Eh, Momma, don't it strike you that way?"

Mrs. Wright's little boy had died ten years ago, but she was still Momma to her husband. It used to irritate me at first. Afterwards when MacTavish had come into my possession, and I had learned to love him, I saw the pathos of it. That's the value of a little dog. Her answer was a foregone conclusion, because she always smiled gently and kindly under all circumstances, and never committed herself to words if they could be done without. She smiled now.

"But I tell you," went on Mr. Conant desperately, and he was gnawing his black moustache, and his level eyebrows met across his forehead, "it's a matter of patriotism. Every Englishman in the Empire has joined up, and I'm a shirker. I'll be branded a coward and a skulker."

"He was despised and rejected," began Sister Luella, and I could see Martin Conant prepared to abjure the Founder of the Faith as presented to him by one of His most ardent servants.

"Let's have midday prayers and talk it over afterwards," said Miss Lodham, with her sound common sense, and down she went on her knees.

"Gee whiz! I guess we'd better," said the minister. "I'm apt to lay myself open to be jolted on to a side track. We'll make it a matter of prayer. Sister Luella will open," and he, too, went down upon his knees.

I wanted to laugh. It was unkind I know, but I really did. Fancy having your martial ardour quenched in that way! I couldn't imagine any mind less attuned to midday prayer than that young man's at that moment. I expected to see him march out of the room and bang the door. But not a bit of it. By the time I was kneeling, there he was beside me, and we were both opposite the long French door looking out over the compound beautiful in its winter dress. I was wondering if he dreaded being prayed over as much as I do. It always seemed to me he must because such a procedure was so foreign to his entire upbringing.

Sister Luella began instructing the Almighty in the needs of the Tsai family. Tsai Ling, aged fifteen, had renounced her heathen name and been baptized Rosalie because I had made her eyelashes grow outwards in the way they were intended to and not inwards into her poor eyes, and now it appeared according to Luella she was troubled about the soul of her great-grandmother, Tsai Ling the elder, who is blind, and of course lame.

"Lord, Thou knowest the blindness of Thy humble servant," went on Luella earnestly. "Thou knowest the hold the heathen superstition——"

I admit the meeting of all workers for noontide prayer is a beautiful idea, but in most communities it must interfere dreadfully with the work on hand. It interfered badly with mine many a time. It was interfering now. Mr. Conant was fidgeting restlessly, and Sister Luella was dictating to the Almighty and had no intention of finishing till she had called the Deity's attention to the fact that she had done all that she could, and it was now up to Him to take a hand. I watched Martin Conant a little maliciously.

MacTavish whimpered, and I put out a restraining hand. He whimpered again, and as I drew him towards me I caught Mr. Conant's sombre eyes. But MacTavish wasn't easily quenched. He fluffed up his pretty little ears, tore himself away, put a little questioning white paw on the glass of the French window and ran back to me eagerly. The little dog was right.

Something unusual was happening at the main gate of the compound. The gatekeeper came into view, an old man in horn spectacles, and a long blue gown; then there was the jangling of mule bells, and through the archway came a gaily caparisoned white mule with bells round his neck and a big red tassel hanging down between his ears. He was in the shafts of a litter, and the arch of its wagon-like tilt just fitted under the archway of the gate. No one in the room moved save MacTavish, who made a wild dash round, and then with pretty black and white head held very high looked ostentatiously out of the window again with an air that said that he at least was on the alert and doing his duty. He took a good look as if to be sure that he was justified in his action, his front paws were wide apart and his little tip-tilted black nose was very emphatic. He was justified. And though like all Japanese pugs he is a silent dog as a rule, he rounded his little mouth and gave one full deep bark like a prolonged "O—o—o—oh!"

In came the whole litter, a big brown mule in the shafts behind, a Mongolian pony followed, and on it was a man who was manifestly a European from the crown of his grey wolf-skin cap to his riding breeches and spurred heels. Five pack-mules followed him, a small donkey and five Chinese attendants, and the whole company moved slowly along the brick pathway that ran under the fairy-like avenue, and as each animal wore a collar of bells, the jingling rang clear and loud on the frosty air.

And Luella prayed on oblivious and her voice rang in impassioned appeal. MacTavish turned to the company and gave another long-drawn protest, and Miss Lodham rose to her feet.

"Look here," she said, "if you people can pay attention to the spiritual needs of the Tsai family, I can't. I've always thought myself it was soap and water they needed most. Why! Good Heavens! Foreigners!"

MacTavish felt himself backed up and went round the company, some kneeling, some standing, with wild yelps expressive of the joy a Japanese pug always feels in the prospect of some change from the ordinary routine. Luella stopped dead and dropped her face in her hands, her sister-in-law looked at her thoughtfully, and then curiosity got the better of all other feelings and they both rose to their feet and joined the rest of us. We stood a second looking out of the window. Then I opened the door, much to MacTavish's relief, and all seizing wraps as we went, for the thermometer was far below zero, we swarmed out to meet the strangers.

The litter came to a full stop as if the white mule had made up his mind he would go no further, and a woman's head muffled to the eyes was thrust out. The foreigner—all white men in China are foreigners, irrespective of their nationality—came forward. He was big and bearded, with a fur cap like a Russian's drawn low on his forehead and a long coat of grey wolf-skin reached almost to his feet. He held out his hand in a knitted woollen glove.

"Good morning," said he, "this is the American mission at Yang Cheng?"

"Sure," said the minister coming forward with simple courtesy, "an' I'm boss." He always speaks hastily but occasionally tries to improve his language as he goes along. "I mean," he said, "I'm the Rev. Septimus Wright in charge. You are welcome. Come right in."

"Hold on a minute," said the newcomer, who looked a hard man, hard as nails, "you mayn't ante up when you realise who I am. I've been running the B.A.T. at Hein Chou. Pai Lang, White Wolf, you know, came down on the place and we've had the devil of a time getting away."

Now the Mission speak of smoking as if it were one of the seven deadly sins. As I have said, their unfortunate converts have to refrain from it and the British American Tobacco Company is their mortal enemy. Mr. Wright is not a tolerant man but he spoke simply and graciously.

"You bet your life," said he, "we'll help you if we can. But Chinese robbers are the cussedest—I mean," he added hastily, "I don't know that there is accommodation in the compound for your muleteers, but there's a very good inn just across the graveyard outside there, and for your personal servants and your wife—is it?"

"Thanks be," said the newcomer, "Mrs. Chapman. I'm Silas Chapman at your service;" and just for a moment he removed his cap showing a thick thatch of iron grey hair. He stepped up to the litter and lifted out a little bundle of furs. A pair of arms went round his neck and he stood for a moment with the woman in his arms.

"Inside," said Miss Lodham, "no good to get her feet cold," and he strode in through the open window and put her down in the nearest arm-chair.

The rest of us came crowding in after them, Mr. Conant last as if he could not tear his mind from his own affairs. He shut the door with a snap. We stood round that chair wondering, and the little figure lying back in it pushed the furs from her head, flung them open in front, showing a dress of white flowered voile, really a very unsuitable costume for travelling, held out a pair of little hands, such a pretty little pair of daintily kept hands, and burst into tears.

"Oh! Oh," she sobbed, "the relief! the relief! Three days and I thought it would never end! Oh it was hard! I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Forgive me. I know it's silly but I just can't help it."

She is very pretty. I have not seen anything so dainty since I came to the mission, and really she is a joy to look at. Even if she is only for ornament, what does it matter? I've come to the conclusion that too much of the utilitarian is almost, not quite, but almost as bad as too much of the ornamental. The four women who made up the mission are good and dear, you couldn't find better women anywhere, and Miss Lodham must have been very pretty when she was young, but not one of them gives the least attention to their personal appearance. I declare I am the only woman in the compound who tries to do her hair becomingly. They think it useless vanity, and when I looked at those women with their hair dragged straight back from their foreheads, and their shoulders enveloped in crocheted woollen shawls, pink and blue and grey and scarlet, bending over the dainty little person in unsuitable voile, I really felt that one way of worshipping the Almighty is by making the best of the looks He has given. A white voile was unsuitable for the occasion, but taken altogether Mrs. Chapman made the sweetest picture of femininity, and my heart went out to her. I understand what old women mean by saying a sight is good for sore eyes.

She is pink and white, with golden hair, with big blue eyes, dewy red lips and pearly white teeth, and there is a little quiver in her voice that goes straight to my heart. I daresay she is rather helpless, but, after all, in these modern times we are a bit overdoing the capable woman. I for one am glad occasionally to meet a woman one doesn't expect to do anything except look pretty. Martin Conant, in spite of his pre-occupation, was attracted, too. He came a little closer, and as he bent over the girl I could not help thinking what a splendid couple they made. I looked so long that that jealous little person, MacTavish, who seems to spend all his time watching his mistress, became aggrieved, and I had to take him up and fondle and soothe him. Strangely enough, the newcomer's husband, the very type of man I should have thought would have been held by such frail and delicate beauty, paid little attention to her. He is a dour, silent man, and once he had got her inside he seemed well content to leave her to others. Just like a man, wasn't it?

Miss Lodham looked at her and turned to the man. Miss Lodham loves beauty, but she always feels she must not waste time pandering to her own fancies. You can't but respect Miss Lodham, even though she does feel it her bounden duty to rule out of this life, in her enthusiasm for the life to come, much that goes to make the world delightful. Again and again she has made me furious because I feel it is so silly, and then she does something so kind and helpful I can't help loving her. After all, she is much harder on herself than on anyone else. She does try and make life good for those girls. And I wonder if anyone ever tried to make life pleasant for a Chinese girl in Yang Cheng before.

"Had any trouble?" she asked Mr. Chapman, who was shedding his furs.

"Pai Lang," he said tersely, and took off a cardigan jacket.

"Sufferin' scarecrows," said the minister, "Pai Lang ain't in these parts."

"Made us get a hustle on us last night," said Mr. Chapman as calmly as if he were not dropping a bomb in our midst.

"Comin' this way?" asked the minister.

"Eventually I should say so," said the newcomer, as if there was no more to be said.

"Well, I dunno if rescuin' missions is your strong suit," said the minister, "but you might let us know where the soldiers are."

"Given it up and gone East," was the cool answer.

Then I remembered my friend Hop Sing's letter, the letter I had paid so little attention to.

"He's got so far as Shou Yang," I said. "Hop Sing told me so, and I didn't believe him," and as Mrs. Chapman lay back with closed eyes I took her round little wrist in my hand and laid my finger on her pulse.

She looked up with such a wistful appeal in her pretty blue eyes. I didn't wonder that Martin Conant—detached Martin Conant—seemed for the moment to have forgotten his own particular trouble, but I was surprised that her husband was so casual. It must have been terribly trying fleeing in the depths of a Northern China winter before a Chinese robber. But MacTavish being put down on his own little legs again, promptly became frantically jealous and tried to take part in the proceedings by putting a gentle questioning paw on her skirts, and since that produced no result, he gathered some folds in his mouth and stood looking up defiantly.

The new young woman screamed, a delicate scream that somehow escaped being vulgar—I have always thought screaming so horrid—and kicked at the poor little chap with a neatly shod foot. MacTavish, who was always a welcome addition to any company on the mission compound, dropped the dress and barked at her in utter astonishment.

"Oh!" she cried, springing from her chair and making a little run towards Martin Conant, "it'll bite me! I know it'll bite me!"

There was a time before I had my little dog when I didn't like dogs myself, and I thought women who fussed over them were fools, so I had to forgive her. It was rather silly, of course, but her husband needn't have been so rough.

"Don't be an ass, Stella," was his contribution to her soothing.

"Stella." I have always thought of Stella as dark and rather regal, not a cuddlesome little thing, but I'll have to readjust my ideas. Anyhow, it's a pretty name.

"Oh, MacTavish!" I said. "Bad dog! How can you be so naughty? No, indeed, he won't bite you. He's really a good little dog. Come here, MacTavish, and make friends," and I picked him up and carried him towards her. Mr. Conant was putting her back in her chair again.

Her clinging hands let go of him reluctantly, and she looked anxiously at me and the little black and white dog. He was smiling amiably, for he is always at peace with the world when he is in my arms. I held him out to make friends. I didn't think anyone could resist MacTavish, but she shrank back.

"It's no good," she said apologetically. "I just can't help it. A dog gives me the shivers."

"Don't be an ass, Stella," said her husband again.

"I can't help it," she repeated. "I'm so afraid of hydrophobia in this country, and my nerves are all on edge after the awful time we've had," and she looked so attractively ashamed of herself that I had to forgive her slighting my treasure dog and trust to time to straighten things out.

"Stella," said her husband, "you let up on that yellow cur streak."

It sounded coarse, and I don't wonder that she wilted before him. He made me feel uncomfortable.

"It's all right," I said, "we'll soon show her that MacTavish is a good little dog. Did you have a very bad time?"

He answered quickly, as if he wanted to get his story in first.

"No," he said curtly, "normal."

"We did," asseverated his wife; "everything frozen hard, air cutting you like a knife if you lifted your face from your furs; inns with rooms like freezing chambers, and full of cold smoke from the k'ang fire—do you know how abominable cold smoke can be? the k'ang too hot to sit on, and the filth——"

Indeed I did know. I have been present at the undressing of many Chinese women, and I have often seen the Lawsons when they come back from an evangelistic tour among the people, and they slip out of their clothes hastily and comb their long hair carefully with a fine tooth comb. And they are sustained by the thought of their holy mission. It was hard for this girl to be subjected to such trials without the uplifting that comes to the Lawsons.

"Don't think about it any more," I advised. "What you want is rest."

"Ought to have freighted you back to 'Frisco," growled her husband unsympathetically.

Poor little thing, no wonder she looks wistful. Wasn't it just like a man? Tired of her already, I suppose.

"I told you Kansu was no place for a woman in winter, or in summer either for that matter," he went on. That is what she gets for loving her husband and sticking to him. He looked round the little company as if defying the women he saw before him to challenge his statement. We none of us did. I didn't think it was worth while and not one of the rest of them probably did consider the climate of China suitable for either man or woman. They all, with the exception of Martin Conant, belonged to the class which sees no beauty in a climate different from that in which it has been born and bred. The climate is nothing to them. They have come to China for a certain purpose—a purpose that they set before all else, and every discomfort or even every luxury is of no account weighed in the balance beside that purpose. I who don't believe in any missions save medical ones give these people all honour.

Mr. Conant seemed to have almost forgotten his own troubles in looking at the newcomer. It was natural enough. And the young woman knows she is attractive, she means to be attractive.

"Stella," said Mr. Chapman, "between the blankets is your place."

"Oh no," she begged, "when I do come in contact with some of my own kind and can exchange an idea it's too bad to send me to bed even if I am foolish and do cry more than I ought."

"Nevertheless," I said, "for exhausted nerves there is nothing like rest."

"It seems to me," said Mr. Conant, "that we're taking the matter of Pai Lang very calmly. I must get back to England and I'd like to know——"

"You bet your boots you ain't goin' to vamoose if that interestin' product Pai Lang's shakin' a leg," said the minister with conviction.

"Pooh!" said Miss Lodham hugging her grey shawl a little closer, "if we got unduly agitated over every rumour of unrest in China we might just as well make up our minds to quit right away."

"Pai Lang and his braves are darned solid fact," said Mr. Chapman. Mr. Conant interrupted him.

"Surely the missionaries," he began, and then to my dismay I caught his eye and he stopped short just as if I had said, "Do you call yourself a missionary?"—which is exactly what I thought—only I wouldn't for the world have said it to him at that moment, and the other man went on calmly. He was determined we should face it.

"Tobacco selling has its little difficulties," said he. "Not all confined to the missionary trade, but you get a pretty clear conception of your surroundings, and on the whole you hold the balance fair. White Wolf has stirred up the Society of the Elder Brethren and that means Anti-Foreign and Anti-Christian feeling in the country, and that means——"

"The President," began the minister, "banks on Christianity——"

The other looked at him.

"In Peking," said he. "Pai Lang's top dog here."

"We missionaries when we come out," said the minister simply, "go nap on it. We aren't supposed to go duckin' an' dodgin' an' side steppin' to save our miserable skins."

"It's a bit rough on you," said the trader. "Got a telegraph?"

"At Lan Chou. Six days away."

"About as useful as if it were in London. Thank you. Let's think of something else."

I couldn't help watching the new young woman. She said nothing, but one couldn't help feeling she was still in the middle of the picture. Every action seemed to proclaim, "Think of me. Do something for me. I am worth thinking about." That is the effect she has on me and I think on Mr. Conant too. You have to take her into consideration. She is such a helpless little thing to face all the horrors of a Chinese rebellion, and for me it does not take away her charm that she is quite aware of it. There is no doubt you get tired of women who are content to efface themselves eternally and put first some impersonal Lord whom you don't in the least realise. There is just the faintest touch of selfishness, a pleasant selfishness, about Stella Chapman which is quite refreshing. I should have thought that to every man she would have been irresistible, and yet her husband was looking at her with something like distaste. Before she was married Aunt Matty declared all men tired of a woman who belonged to them, and here was a case in point, for she is sweet and attractive and you'd have thought that at this time in especial he would have been tender. It is very evident he does not value the thing he has won.

The minister took his wife's hand and patted it.

"I thought the Lord was playing it mighty low down on us," he said, "when he took our little Jimmy, but it's a dead cert He allus romps in a winner."

I did want to smile. I had to remind myself that Septimus Wright does a good and helpful work among the Chinese, but I couldn't help looking at Mr. Conant. I'm quite sure he at least must have been feeling there is a good deal to be said for the dignified reserve of the Episcopal Church. They say every man has the God he deserves, so I suppose every man serves the Church that appeals to him most. This Church always makes me squirm.

"Nevertheless," said Miss Lodham, with her sound common sense, "I see no reason for not having dinner. I've been twice as near to robber bands at least ten times in the last fifteen years, and the bands never eventuated."

"This band," said Mr. Chapman, and he spoke as if stating a fact, "is going to eventuate. The elders at Hsin Chou have fled West and everybody's taking a hand at looting——"

"I know," said the minister, "reg'ler festive splurge."

Mr. Chapman nodded. "Too hot for me. At Ba Chuang my wife saw two dead men. I saw ten and we got out."

"Lightning conductor tour," suggested the minister, and again he nodded.

"All the more reason," said Miss Lodham, "that we should have dinner. I've run away before now and regretted the dinner I might have had."

Stella Chapman wrung her hands.

"How can you? How can you? Who could possibly eat?"

"Oh for God's sake, Stella," said her husband roughly, "Shut up."

Brutal of him.

"You must eat, you know," I said, "we can't afford to spoil that pretty complexion. It's a rarity in China. See, here's MacTavish asking you to cheer up. We're not going to let anything harm you if we can help it."

"You come to your room, my dear, and wash," said Mrs. Wright kindly.

"I'm frightened," she said shrinking up against me. "I'm frightened. You don't know what it's like on those roads."

"Now, my girl," said her husband, "you ought to be content. You've shaken up the mission."

She looked at him, rose up and put two trembling hands on my shoulders. I'm not very fond of being touched but I put my arm round her.

"She wants a little care," I said very distinctly, looking her husband straight in the face. He is rather good-looking, and strange to say the eyes he turned on me were certainly kind.

"Don't let her impose on you," he said in quite a friendly fashion. "You see I'm up to these little stunts. Now then, Stella, get it off your chest. What is it you want?"