“THEY SAY SHE KILLED HIM”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 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).

Meanwhile, as soon as he heard in London, Sir George Lane repeatedly cabled China, and agitated for intervention from the authorities at Hong Kong. For an entire afternoon he was the objective of numerous reporters, to whose editors the heroism of a "society" beauty was a piece of first-class news. But apart from Sir George Lane nobody in. London seemed to have bothered to find out who Trench was; and he remained from first to last the anonymous "doctor” referred to by the cable. Sir George Lane, however, learned the doctor's identity from the China Relief League, and his bewilderment coming on top of his anxiety threw him into greater confusion than he had ever been in in his life before. Not only had Valerie landed herself ■ on that fantastic island, but for some] unguessable reason she was there with her worst enemy. Sir George felt he had been tricked. ] He fancied she must have had some] ulterior motive for going with the mis- j sion, besides the charitable instincts she had mentioned. He thought of innumerable explanations, one of which was that in some way or other Trench was blackmailing her.' The reporters were surprised by his anger over the affair. “I take a grave view of it,” they reported him as saying. “My daughter should never have been allowed to go ashore. She is not a qualified nurse, nor is she in any way fitted for the task.” Sir George was annoyed with himself when he read it, as he had not intended to say anything at all. CHAPTER XIII. The launch chugged towards Sungechow over an oily swell. Simmonds, standing amidships with Trench, told him earnestly: “Mrs. Simmonds will be very surprised to see you and the nurse. This is more than we ever expected. Europeans in general out here are as cynical as the Chinese themselves. We expect to do the Lord’s work without aid from any but Him.” “She isn’t a nurse,” was all Trench said. “She’ll be no use as a nurse!” He turned and left Simmonds and made his way aft to where Valerie was standing. The soldiers were squatting on the bow. The helmsman's wheel was in the engine room, where he stood on a box, looking forward through a slit of window in the coach roof. Valerie had the cockpit to herself.

Trench was angry. The remorse he had been feeling was swallowed up in annoyance at the situation she had created. To him her action seemed a piece of childish theatricalism. He climbed into the cockpit beside 'her. Valerie saw the anger gleaming in his eyes. “Well,” he said, grimly, “here we are!” “Why did you come?” she asked him, in a low voice. “Why did you try to stop me from coming?” “Because you're an extremely foolish young woman!” “If I am, is it your business?” “Yes; because I’m aware that I'm supposed to feel morally responsible for this melodramatic gesture of yours.” She turned away from him, to overShe turned away from him, too overpowered by emotion to speak. He stood gazing in helpless annoyance at the line of her averted profile. At last she turned to him, her face white, her lips quivering. “Why do you persecute me? Can’t you leave me alone?” Valerie uttered the words clearly in spite of her emotion. She saw Dr. Trench flinch, his eyes open in surprise. He didn’t speak for a moment and when he did. the annoyance died out of his face. His voice was quiet but firm. “My objection is that you can do no good here; that you’ll be running a risk which will profit no one!” “Except me, perhaps!” She broke off convinced of the uselessness of trying to explain her attitude. . Trench waited for her to continue, but as she did not, he went on. “At the risk of persecuting you, I want you to give me your word that you’ll keep out of contact with the cholera patients." "I couldn't do that." “Well. I shall be in charge when I get. ashore, and I'm afraid I shall insist.” “In charge?” Valerie said, with a faint laugh, and the colour came back into her face. “Of thousands of cholera victims? Will you be able to keep me away from them all?” “You’re still attached to the relief mission so I suppose I have some authority over you.” ‘Tve already defied Dr. Macey, who is your senior. And so have you. I doubt that we dVe with (ho mission any more.” “I’m not joking," said Trench. “Nor am I. I came to help. 1 can’t give my word that I won't.” Her eyes were clouded with storms again. But argument was closed and they fell into uneasy silence when Simmonds climbed into the cockpit to join them. No one spoke for a moment or two. One phrase of Valerie's echoed in his ears as Trench gazed towards the land, growing nearer now. the town standing out as an untidy huddle of grey roofs along the shore, the smoke of the smouldering fires blowing over it in luminous blue clouds . . . “Why do you persecute me?" The word startled him painfully in its nearness to truth. It had never occurred to him that that unfortunate visit he had paid Valerie on the evening after the inquest might be described in such terms! Trench pulled himself together with an effort, to listen to Simmonds talking

of conditions ashore: We use the mission school as a hospital,” Simmonds said. “We have nowhere else. The military governor gave me five hundred mats, and he lent me some soldiers to help. The Christian Chinese from the mission help us, and Mrs. Simmonds looks after as many.of the woman sufferers as she can. But we can't cope with them, all, they lie out on the ground all round the mission school, they die where they lie before we can do anything for them. Nine out of ten die. But they won’t do anything to help themselves. “The open sewers run through the streets. They go on fertilising their fields as they’ve always done. I’ve spoken to the Governor, I’ve tried to make him understand the risks of infection. But nothing is done. They think the cholera is brought by an evil wind. 'We boil all the water, doctor, cook all our food thoroughly, take every precaution in our house. I tell them that’s the reason we don’t get it, I but they think we’re protected by devils. “The Governor himself has more belief in devils, Doctor, than in what I say!” His rather close-set grey eyes, humourless as those of a zealot can be, stared anxiously from Trench to Valerie. Tie broke off to suggest that she should sit down. It was tiring, holding on to the side to keep her balance as the launch plunged smoothly over the swell, and Valerie sank on the seat. It was dirty and queer smells rose from the bilge washing below the planks in the bottom of the cockpit. Valerie had been too wholly inspired by her own purpose to feel any fear until then. But she had read enough literature on the subject of cholera infection since she had joined the mission, to have all the horrors of knowledge without the indifference of familiarity. Her skin crept. The distant, queer-shaped houses on the shore looked suddenly loathsome, expressive of a nameless evil. “They can’t make enough coffins,” Simmonds was saying. “They are keeping the dead wrapped in mats and rags until, as they say, ‘the earth is ready for them.’ I tried to get the Governor have the soldiers burn the bodies, but he won’t, because he says it will. cause a riot. Do you wonder the infection spreads, doctor?” “No, I don’t!” Trench admitted. “Filth! Vice! Famine!” said the missionary, nodding his head at the shore towards which they were gliding. “And now disease! Twenty years Mrs. Simmonds and I have been here! It teaches us modesty. We expect no alteration in our time; but we still believe that if we have saved one single soul our work has been worth while!”

Valerie tried to control the quaking which began to shake her body. Physical revulsion from the seat she was sitting on, the greenish wooden wharf towards which the helmsman was manoeuvring the boat, the yellow-fac-ed, black and dark blue figures standing there, gave hei’ the real shudder of aversion yvhich people often simulate, but seldom! really experience. As the launch drew near to the wharf the soldiers on the bow got up and began walking aft. They stopped amidships. But one, his shaven head bare in the sun, his dirty tunic open at the throat, came slowly to the edge of the cockpit, and sat down on the engine room deck head. Valerie, looking towards the wharf, hardly noticed him. And then he suddenly pitched forward among the coiled ropes, twisting and drawing up his knees, and moaning and crying as he lay on his face, his nails scratching on the deck. The faces of the soldiers amidships' were turned that way, in foolish astonishment. Valerie rose with a horrid tightening in her heart; an immediate impulse to help made her put her foot on the seat preparatory to climbing on to the deck. But before she could lift the other foot after it, a hand closed on her arm. and she turned to face Trench. “Come back.” She tried dumbly, to pull her arm away. That horrible moaning and crying! The soldiers amidships stayed cautiously where they were, staring at their fallen comrade, chattering among themselves. “Please!” Trench's face was stern, his lips compressed. His other hand on her shoulder he pushed her down into the cockpit. “You can do no good!" He turned from her and climbed to the deck, Simmonds following him. Valerie felt sick. She could see Trench bending down, but the soldier was out of sight as she sat on' the seat. The moaning and crying went on. She heard Trench say something about "hospital,” and Simmonds reply: “We’ll have to let him lie. There isn’t an inch of space left!” | Hooks on the end of long poles held by yellow hands reached over the side of the wharf, dragging the launch alongside. CHAPTER XIV. ‘ In contrast to that gruesome arrival, the Simmonds bungalow, with its European furniture, its sacred texts and etchings on the walls—there was even an upright piano in the "parlour" as Mrs. Simmonds called it—was reassuringly prosaic. Only tlie Chinese servant padding about soft footed with a perpetual smile, kept one from fancying, at afternoon teatime particularly, that one was somewhere in Brixton. The house stood on a slight rise, looking over the wall of the mission compound wall, towards the sea; a patch of garden in front was filled with Mrs. Simmonds carefully tended flowers and semitropical trees; the mission school was outside the compound wall, fifty yards down the hill on the way to the town. (To be continued.)