Читать книгу A Wind from the Wilderness - Mary Gaunt - Страница 7

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THE FLIGHT TO THE HILLS

"Far are those tranquil hills

Dyed with fair evening's rose

On urgent secret errand bent

A traveller goes."

MR. CONANT and I helped a couple of the mission servants to carry the Chapmans' things to the hills, but, of course, we could not take a quarter of what they had on the mules. Mrs. Chapman prepared for the road was sweet. Her hood of white Mongolian cat-skin suited her pretty blue eyes and her rosebud mouth with the gleam of pearly teeth. She evidently thought more of Mr. Conant's power to help her than of mine. Her attitude towards the rest of us was that of a child to its guardians. She spoke as if because of our greater strength the same danger did not threaten us, as if she only needed pity.

"I've been telling Silas," said she with a little watery smile, "I won't be any more trouble than I can possibly help, but I'm not accustomed to walking on rough roads like this."

The roads are certainly terrible. We came through the western suburb of the town, and the little street was mud-trampled and trodden and churned by the passing of men and beasts bearing burdens, and when it had become thoroughly impassable it had frozen hard. It was weary walking even for me in a pair of stout leather boots which reached to the bottom of my utilitarian skirts half-way to my knee. Mrs. Chapman's skirts were fairly short, but she had on thin silk stockings and high-heeled shoes with paste buckles, very dainty and pretty, but extremely unsuitable for the work in hand.

"This arduous life is not at all suited to your style, is it?" said Mr. Conant, and his voice, to my surprise, was unsympathetic.

Her husband did not take the faintest notice of her, so we each gave her an arm and trudged her along through the frost-bound streets with the houses on either hand hermetically sealed and apparently empty.

But those houses were not empty. I knew they were full of people withdrawing themselves from contact with the foreigner and all his ways. I have spent close on two years in the country, and it is not likely this sinister development would be lost upon us. Ordinarily they would all run out to lay their ailments before me and see if they could not get a little cheap advice. True it only cost them one cash at the hospital, and not that if they took the trouble to prove they had not got it, but still in Kansu a cash is a cash, and if they thought they could get advice for nothing on the spot they had always tried for it. Therefore this drawing away was suspicious, and I had to set my teeth and try to act up to the advice I was so free with for the benefit of Stella Chapman. MacTavish trotted along cheerfully ahead as if the whole expedition had been got up for his benefit, and Stella stumbled along between us until she gave a sharp cry, and if we hadn't held her would have fallen. Her husband went stolidly on, but to be sure his hands were full.

Luckily it was a contingency I had foreseen, and I dropped the bundle I was carrying, and putting my hand on her shoulder managed to seat her on the snowy step of a shut-up house, a high stone step with two little carved lions standing up on each side of it. She looked as if she were going to resent my masterfulness, and I must admit, though I was sorry for her, I wanted to shake her, for time was precious. I drew from my pocket my trump card, a stout pair of woollen stockings and a pair of quilted slippers, such as are worn by the Chinese women who have unbound their feet.

But my trump card, I regret to say, was not appreciated, though how she would have got on without it heaven only knows.

Even at that moment she made a wry face.

"Stella, don't be a damned ass," said her husband harshly, and I melted before his wrath. "Take off those silly shoes."

An abominable way to address a wife, even though it was senseless waste of time discussing different sorts of shoes in the midst of those silent, sinister watching houses. And Mr. Conant was actually smiling as if he held the key to this man's conduct. I could have smacked all three with joy.

"I know you're kind," said she plaintively, as I hastily pulled on the stout stockings, "very kind. I know it's silly to have such aggravating flesh, but that wool, even through the silk——"

"March!" said Mr. Conant. It was his only contribution towards the situation. I scrambled to my feet and picked up her bundle, and she, too, got up and slipped a coaxing hand under my arm.

"You're not cross, are you?" she said.

I know I don't make allowances enough. A woman once told me, and she was fond of me, too, that I was hard, that I would be kind enough in a real trouble, but had no sympathy for fancies. I don't believe I have. It does seem so stupid to make trouble.

We who had eyes to see saw enough to worry us on that road.

On either side were now stalls with merchandise upon them, the mean little stalls of a poor little suburb of a small town, but such as they were they were the sole possessions of the people. Every stall we passed was mysteriously empty, though in the distance we had seen the owner and his men busy about it. And they were canny, those small Eastern shopkeepers. They did not leave the stalls bare, they just left a little of the poorest of the stock spread out as advantageously as possible. A bundle of the thinnest cotton of a rich dark blue shade artistically draped a stall given over to the sale of cottons, as if the owner were making the very best of his wares, thirty cents' worth of coarsest household crockery was displayed ostentatiously on another stall; the butcher had the well-picked backbone of a mule hung from the rafters, and the leg of a very lean dog on his boards; but the money-changer had the best of it, for where thirteen hundred cash go to the Mexican dollar, quite a big show can be made with the coin of the country in neat little piles, though the aggregate does not reach half a dollar in value.

But for once there was no desire on the part of perhaps the poorest population in the world to earn a little money. No one came near us. Mr. Conant commented on it.

"I thought we'd certainly get someone to help with the loads here," he said, as a rickety door closed in the back of a money-changer's stall, leaving at least a dollar's worth of cash entirely at our mercy.

"Bad," said Mr. Chapman beneath his breath, and he thought I did not hear.

"What can we——" began Mr. Conant, but the other man threw up his head and said "Damn!" as if the matter were beyond discussion.

When we had passed through the western suburb I looked back. The walls of the town stood up grey and square against the eastern skyline. At the north and south the neatly rounded corners were topped by little turrets with roofs with curled-up eaves, and in the very centre stood the many-roofed gatehouse and the westering sun caught a glint of gorgeous gold and red in it. The ground fell away from where we stood and then rose again towards the city, so that all that was graceful and picturesque and beautiful showed up in the afternoon light, while the mean little suburb lay half-hidden in the hollow between, but even it and all the fields round were covered by the glittering white snow. All the shabbiness of the miserable hovels by which we had passed were mercifully veiled in this soft and tender mantle. Not that we had any time for looking back; ahead of us were the hills, and here, just where the pathway passed by the last humble dwelling-place, the couple of mission servants who had been carrying some of the Chapmans' things had laid down their burdens.

They turned to me as the one who would understand them best, and they said very humbly, but with a note of determination in their voices, that their work needed them at the mission station and they could not go on. MacTavish sat down in the snow and contemplated them and gave an emphatic little whimper as if to accent the matter.

"But they must go on," urged Stella Chapman. "We have no one to carry our things. They must go on."

Her husband looked at her contemptuously. I believe jeering at her relieved the tension for him, and when I felt like being angry with her, for she was foolish, I had only to listen to him and my wrath vanished.

"Scoot's the order of the day, my dear," he said, with a scornful little laugh, as he watched the stubborn backs of the two servants trudging stolidly back on their tracks empty-handed!

"But if we can't get anyone to carry our things," she said; "if we can't, Silas."

He merely threw back his head. I could have hit him, and I would if he had been my husband, but she merely mourned,

"Silas, we can't carry them, we can't. I can hardly walk myself. Oh, Silas, if I wasn't so weak. I can't help it, can I?" and her wistful voice quivered off into a sob.

We were close now to the range of steep and rugged hills that lay to the north-west of the town. And they were steep, so steep that in many places, in spite of the heavy fall of snow of the night before, much of their slope was bare earth and rock. In that direction there was not a house in sight. There were no trees, no farms, nothing but the forbidding inhospitable hills, all rocks and snow and ice. The thermometer was below zero, the sun was drawing to the west, and when night fell the cold would be gripping. It seemed madness to go on. I turned to Mr. Chapman.

"You had better come back with us."

"My girl," he said simply, and when he spoke so I liked him, "you can tell what I think of your chances when I tell you I'm going on. If anybody's going to change it had better be you."

We had thrashed that out before, and I had made up my mind. So I laughed. Not because I saw any mirth in the situation, for his words made the cold hand grip at my heart again, but because, I suspect, that, at bottom, our emotions were the same, and what made Stella Chapman cry forced me in desperation to laugh. She did not see it at all in the same light.

She stopped crying and looked at me reproachfully.

"How can you! How can you!"

"I hate to hustle you," I heard myself saying, "but I'm so afraid of them shutting the gates before I can get back."

"Then we'll keep you," she said, stretching out her hands.

"Stella!" her husband cut her short sharply.

But I could stop to listen no longer. I snatched up the biggest bundle I could manage, and with MacTavish trotting gaily along ahead I ran into the hills. Before I had found the little turning Mr. Chapman was beside me.

"It's good of you to help us," he said. "Don't think I'm ungrateful." And it seemed impossible to connect him with the man who spoke so harshly to his wife.

"This way," I said. "Come along. But where's your wife? How will she——"

"My dear young lady," he interrupted, "if she doesn't get over that young man to carry her, she'll worry it out on her own."

It was harshly spoken, but before we had done I found he could be kind enough. We turned round a cliff and came into a little hollow of the hills, snow-clad and open to the sky. But it was going to be a fine night, and on all sides the rocks rose round and kept off the wind.

I quickly set about arranging the rugs we had brought to make a warm couch, and MacTavish setting himself to help me, I trod on his poor little paw, and Mr. Chapman, the man who, it seemed, could never speak kindly to his wife, picked him up and petted him.

"He isn't hurt," he said, "only his feelings got a knock." Then we heard the others coming, and we leaned over, and there below was Mr. Conant staggering along under a heavy burden with Mrs. Chapman clinging to him.

Without waiting to turn the corner and come up the long way he dropped his bundle, picked up the lady in his arms and handed her up to her husband, who with little ceremony dragged her over the top of the cliff. The bundle followed, and Mr. Conant came scrambling up after just as Stella settled herself down on the couch I had made and began quietly crying. She had shed quite a lot of tears since we had made her acquaintance.

But I could not do anything more for her.

"You'll have to try and look upon it as a picnic," I said, but the suggestion fell flat.

She turned on me reproachful eyes swimming in tears, and then looked at Mr. Conant.

"I am so sorry I've been such a trouble," she said.

We discussed the matter as we two and MacTavish sped back to the city gates.

"That little woman's going to make things hard for herself," said he. "If she would only exercise a little common sense."

"With Pai Lang at your heels," I said, "there doesn't seem much chance of exercising any sense at all."

He laughed. "It's just as bad for you, and you're taking it coolly enough."

I wasn't taking it coolly inside, but I liked him for thinking of me.

"You see, I haven't a husband reminding me every two minutes I'm a silly ass."

And again he laughed a little queerly.

"It's wonderful the difference in women," he said.

"Yes. I know that Luella Lawson and her sister are just as much to be pitied, poor dears."

"They certainly don't appeal to the aesthetic side," said he whimsically.

"If only they weren't on such intimate terms with the Lord!"

"It's a matter for thankfulness to me," he said, "to think they find comfort and consolation——"

"Where you do not look for it yourself." I don't know what on earth made me say that. I suppose because I felt the need of comfort and consolation. I picked up MacTavish because I do not like him to walk where there is danger of his being bitten by wonks, and always when I felt lonely his little warm body pressing against me gave me comfort.

Martin Conant did not answer. He paused a moment and the last rays of the setting sun fell full on the western gate towards which we were making, and it was a glory of crimson and gold.

"Do you know," he said, "I'm afraid it's only of late I have given true thought to religion. I accepted my mother's teaching, which was very sweet and lovable, but I have never gone beyond the thoughts of a boy of fourteen."

"And yet you came out here?"

"Of course," he smiled, "don't you think it is exactly what a boy of fourteen would do?"

"But you were not fourteen."

"About as unstable."

"When did you grow up?" I asked wonderingly.

"When I came here."

"Oh come!" I couldn't help laughing.

"If you only think, you'll see I'm right," he said. "Don't you see that human nature is steadily advancing, each generation wants something better, wider, broader than the one that went before it. My mother had advanced beyond the hard Calvinism in which she was brought up and had evolved for herself a very tender faith, a God in Heaven Who loves all the earth, and there—"he paused and went on, "she was right. There must be some Power for good behind all. And when I came here——"

"Now don't tell me," I had to say it and yet I am very fond of the missionaries among whom I have lived so long, "that the people here have converted you."

"But," he said, "that is exactly what they have done. And yet their faith's the worst part of them. As they preach it, it is rigid and hard and cruel, and they in the kindness of their hearts are trying to impose it upon a kindly honest people who want, not religion, but someone to take them in hand and give them a chance of living more comfortably in this world."

"Indeed they do, poor things," I could agree with him there most heartily, "if you only saw the sights I see."

"I know," he said. "The suffering is the part I can't explain away in that Power over all."

"And yet, a world without pain—if we always had fair weather——" but I stopped because I had reached the crucial point where we all stop.

"Perhaps," he said, "it is well we should not see too clearly. But," we were close below the frowning gates now and could see in the dusty entrance the two upright white stones that marked the width of the axle that could pass along the narrow streets of the city, "do you understand we are up against things now?"

I could only hug MacTavish a little closer.

"I can't believe it."

"You know the people better than I do—that man behind there in the hills didn't seem to think——" He stopped.

"He thought there was a mighty poor chance in the hills," I said, "and yet he wanted us to stay. Why didn't you stay? You're not a missionary."

"And you're not a missionary."

We were walking through the streets of the town now and there was no one visible. The houses were silent, sinister, watching as they had been in the suburb. Only in the distance could we see any sign of life.

"It's like walking in the shadow of death," I said.

"They'll be glad enough to see you at the hospital," he comforted.

When we reached the mission compound the minister met us at the gate. It was evident he was troubled.

"They've made a clean bolt of it," said he. "There's not a solitary galoot left in the hospital."

I stood still. It is disconcerting, to say the least of it, to have your self-sacrifice tossed back in your face.

"Lang Hsu," I faltered, for I knew that Lang Hsu would be in agony if she were not attended to every few hours, and it was the thought of the woman's suffering that had made me stay.

"They've cut and run," said the minister as if he sought but could not find some way to break the matter to me more gently, "didn't the cook tell you? I sent him to say you had better stay with those people—it wasn't worth while coming back."

"We've not seen him," said Martin Conant looking round as if perchance we might have overlooked such a trifle as the tall cook. "Missed us, I expect. Suppose we all go back."

"Too late," said the Rev. Septimus, "already they're shutting the city gates. We'll have to wait and see what the day brings forth."