“THEY SAY SHE KILLED HIM”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 March 1941, Page 10

“THEY SAY SHE KILLED HIM”

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT. COPYRIGHT.

BY

PEARL BELLAIRS.

(Author of “Velvet and Steel,” “Christabel,” etc.)

CHAPTER XII. (Continued). The colour rushed into her pale face, and she threw him a quick glance, wondering if he had heard what she had heard, about themselves—? But there was no sign of any consciousness of that sort in his lace as he went on: “I’m not worrying about it much. I’ve learnt to expect it. These things follow one about. Did you suppose that if you went to China you'd have heard the last of it?” So that was why he thought she was going to China—to escape from the gossip about herself! Her pain and humiliation took her breath away. “I didn’t think about that at all,” she said at last. “Oh?” His tone was one of amused inquiry. “The bright- life doesn’t afford enough excitement, and the search for a new sensation takes one even as far as the war in China?” She grasped the rail to steady herself under the torment of that ironic voice, and stared desperately at the dazzling horizon. “The bright life, as you call it, is very selfish and meaningless.” “No doubt when one is bored stiff with travelling first one can get quite a kick out of deliberately condemning oneself to travel Tourist B,” remarked Trench. Her confidence of being able to convince him left her. Her attempts to express herself failed, the words she had rehearsed sounded stilted and sententious as soon as she had spoken them. “After what happened about—about your brother I felt I could only make amends by giving my life for other people!” “Oh, good lord!" Trench burst out laughing with a sort of angry derision, and ran his hand impatiently through his hair. “A great sacrifice! No, it’s too much!” Valerie stared at him. Her soul inside her seemed to grow still as death. This man was terrible. He was worse, much worse than she had ever been. “He has no heart,” she thought. Perhaps Trench saw in the wide fixity of her gaze something of the-judg-ment, the profound understanding of him which had come to her. It was like a dash of cold water on his half-conscious enjoyment of the pain he knew he was inflicting on her: “I'm sorry,” he began. “I suppose I’ve been very rude. But really, I’m afraid it does seem rather childish to me!” The lids fell over her agonised, accusing eyes. The soul she had exposed to him seemed totally concealed. She turned and walked quietly away. Trench watched her go. Then he cursed under his breath. She stepped rather carefully through the doorway into the lounge—he could see her waver a little—and disappeared into the interior shadows of the ship. He turned to lean on the rail again, scowling at the brilliant sea with eyes which were sore from its glare. His anger with himself was mixed with surprise. He suddenly understood that she was sincere, even though she might be naive . . that she had really been affected by Peter's death. To try to make her fee] it more, was no better than being cruel to a child. The way in which he had given way to his prejudice had been monstrous He was puzzled, too, because he had become aware that all that time he had watched her flinching at his words, he had hardly had a thought of Peter in his head. If anyone had been making an excuse of Peter it was he. He realised that he must put things right with her. But it was dinner time before he saw her again. Then he could not get so much as a glance from her. Her face was still, and white, and her eyes heavy in dark circles of shadow. She looked physically ill, and did not speak. To attempt to make conversation with her in the circumstances seemed impossible. Chafing under a growing sense of guilt, Trench was taciturn with everyone else, and all he could do was to watch her picking at the food on her plate. He made up his mind that he would speak to her after dinner, if he got the chance. But the chance didn’t come. She was nowhere on deck; presumably she had gone to her cabin. And though he deliberately avoided being dragged into a rubber of bridge with the captain, so that he could be on the look out for her, he didn’t see her again that evening. CHAPTER XII. When the dawn came the Peiping was lying in a silvery sea off the island of Sungehow. Clumps of bamboo and willow stood against the horizon among the flat paddy fields threaded with ribbons of water. The cramped blackish buildings, fantastic in outline, of the town Hsui Fu, stood on the shores of a swampy river mouth and behind it. detached from earth by a wreath of morning mist, rose a single hill, alone in all the flat landscape, and even at that distance showing itself warty with the tumulus of innumerable graves. Drifts of smoke from four fires on the extremities of the village rolled over its roofs to mingle with the silvery haze over the rice fields. Watching through his glasses, the first officer said: “They’re burning fires at the gates.” Twenty minutes later, when the Chinese Post Office launch put off from the shore, he trained his glasses on her mast head, and made out a yellow signal. “Yes, it'll be cholera,” said the captain. “Tell Mr. Parker to go half way down the ladder and throw the mails into the launch. See that nothing is taken aboard, and make ’em stand the launch off again immediately.” The second officer was on the ladder with his mail bag when the launch

came alongside. The postal officer, a Hindu, was not on board. The launch was manned by fisherjnen, and several soldiers. The only European aboard her was the Methodist missionary, Mr. Simmonds. He stood on the gunwale, shouting to the second officer. His voice floated up to the knot of European passengers gathered at the rail of the upper deck. Trench heard him say the word “cholera” several times. “Cholera . . Post Officer . . Customs Officer . . Died yesterday!” The second officer threw the mail bag into the launch, and continued to hang on to his ladder. The missionary talked to him earnestly. Even at that distance, there was anxiety in the way in which he kept lifting his face to .glance up at the ship. The breeze blew his hair away from a pale, narrow face, and he looked small and helpless against the background of the sea and pestilence stricken island. The Chinese stood or squatted in the launch in casual attitudes and appeared to be quite uninterested in whatever was the object of the missionary’s vociferations.

Mr. Harkness leaned on the rail by the chief officer. After a time the second officer came back up the ladder, and conferred with the chief officer on the main deck, while the sailors kept back the inquisitive crowd of oriental passengers with raucous shouts. Then the chief officer went up to the captain’s quarters, while Mr. Harkness carried on a conversation with Simmonds.

Five minutes later Dr. Macey was summoned from the upper deck to speak to the Captain. Everyone on the upper deck was mystified, until Mr. Harkness came up, and told them what it was all about. Mr. Simmonds says it’s the worst epidemic he’s seen in twenty years out here. He wants drugs and carbolic, he’s all alone there with his wife. No other Europeans. The Customs Officer is dead, and the postal officer died yesterday. I understand the Captain is asking Dr. Macey if he’s willing to hand over some carbolic and permanganate pills out of medical mission supplies. The information circulated through the little crowd of nurses. Valerie turned from the rail where she had been watching the launch, to ask with a subdued intensity in her voice: “Surely they need more help than that?”

“What help can we give them?” said Mr. Harkness. “I would go ashore myself, but my work is elsewhere. I have to get back to Amoy. Hundreds of souls there need me. I have been away too long. The Lord will look after Simmonds!” But his face was dismayed. Fear of the cholera made him half doubtful of the excuse he had for saving himself. "They've made the mission school into a hospital,” he said. “Simmonds says his wife is working with him.” “Couldn't some of us help her?” Valerie asked.

“Perhaps. He says the Lord will preserve them.” One of the nurses suggested that perhaps it would be decided that the whole mission might go ashore. "No, indeed!” said Miss Gallagher. “It’s most unlikely that Dr. Macey would decide on that! . We’re under orders to go to Amoy, we couldn’t stop here just because there’s a cholera epidemic!” In the Captain’s cabin Dr. Macey was saying much the same: “There are twenty thousand people in all here —and there are hundreds of thousands needing us in Amoy. Besides I wouldn’t be responsible for sending any of the nurses ashore to work wider the conditions here—l can imagine what they’ll be like! The best we can do is supply the drugs and disinfectant. I'll go and talk to Simmonds and find out what he’s doing, and tell him anything he wants to know.

The Captain asked Trench if he would go to the hold to identify the cases of drugs that Dr. Macey wanted taken out.

Hungry for breakfast, after a night which had been disturbed by troubled considerations of Valerie Lane, in addition to the mewing of musical instruments and interminable conversation among the Chinese passengers. Trench helped O'Connell to find the right articles in the gloomy ’tween decks of the Peiping. Trench was interested enough in the matter of Sungehow and its lonely missionary fighting the horrors of Asiatic cholera, but he was impatient also, to get the affair over. In the night he had formulated some idea of what he'd say to Valerie and he wanted an opportunity to say it. Unquestionably what he had said to her after Peter’s death had had a deep effect on her; now that he found that was so, he felt completely incapable of judging her . . .

If she had really come with the mission because of his strictures, then he was responsible for more than he cared lo think. The tilings lie had said to her on the previous day, making everything infinitely worse, made him so anxious to recant and win her confidence if possible, that ho chafed with impatience while the Chinese hands hauled the cases of carbolic from under a mountain of other cargo . . . When at last, somewhat begrimed, he emerged with O’Coimell on the upper deck, he looked round, half blinded by sunshine expecting lo find her in the group of nurses standing round the door . . .

He was immediately conscious of tensity of excitement and horror in the faces staring at him. Two voices exclaimed at once: ‘She’s going!” and another cried: “Miss Lane is going!” O'Connell asked: ‘Miss Lane? Going where?” (To be continued.)