“THEY SAY SHE KILLED HIM”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 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 XVI. (Continued). Nevertheless, knowing the honourable reputation of Western medical men, he would give the suggestion Trench had put forward his humble attention . . . Trench could get nothing more definite that that, and a series of bows and amiable smiles. While he waited to see if anything would be done, he improved the sanitary arrangements of the hospital, and carried on a desperate fight for the lives of individual patients. With all his spare energy he tried to create a situation in which Valerie would have to leave. e He suggested to Simmonds that Mrs. Simmonds should certainly go away. “Yes,” said Simmonds. “I shall persuade her to go when the Peiping calls next month.” “Next month!” said Trench. “The epidemic will be over by then. Couldn’t she get a passage to Hong Kong on a Chinese steamer? There’s one lying off the wharf now!” “Impossible! I wouldn't hear of it. She could only go in a British-owned ship," Simmonds objected. “The sister ship to that one, the Kai Lung, was boarded by pirates only three months ago. They shot the captain and the officers and took all the wealthier pas-1 sengers ashore and held them for ransom.” He told Trench a hair-raising story he had heard from an eye-witness of the event; of fingers cut off one by one and sent to relatives who could not find the ransom money; of children sold "into sin” on thb mainland; of old men and women tied to stakes, and left to die of hunger because they were not worth keeping alive. “No, no!” said Simmonds. “I’d never let Mrs. Simmonds leave here except on a ship flying the British or American flag. The pirates leave them alone, except on rare occasions. They’re too much afraid of reprisals.” Trench realised that it was useless to press the point. Simmonds evidently preferred the risk of cholera to the risk of pirates, even if Mrs. Simmonds —and Valerie—could have been induced to go. He arranged things as much as he could so that she should attend the hospital when he was there, so that he could see that she did the jobs to which least risk was attached. She was most docile, and pathetically eager to do the right thing. His remorse where she was concerned had given him a terrific jolt. The result of his changed opinion of her was to swing him over to the opposite pole. He regarded her with a queer emotional enthusiasm; and if anyone had suggested to him that Joan of Arc was the more noble character of the two, he would have disputed it hotly.

And yet at the same time she was just a woman, a child, a dependent helpless creature. In those hours which he so badly needed for sleep in the intervals of work he kept himself awake thinking of her with alternations of exaggerated admiration and bitter anxiety. He introduced masks for everyone working in the hospital. He noticed only then how much attention he. gave to Valerie’s entrance into any room he-happened to be in. In their white gowns and masks everyone looked so much alike that he had to look twice before he knew who they were. He found that whatever dislike Valerie might have had for him, had vanished completely. . She treated him with perfect confidence, saying things to him that he was certain she never said to either of the Simmonds. Sometimes when I’ve been in this place for some hours I begin to fancy it isn’t true, and that I’m in a nightmare; I even try to wake myself up. It happened yesterday, when I was waiting for you to come in and give that old woman some saline. And then you came into the ward, and I seemed able to take hold of things again.” “It’s not exactly cheerful,” Trench said. “But I’m more used to this sort of thing than you are. Y’all must find it pretty bad.” “So much suffering makes one beyond feeling sorry. It’s just frightening!” She spoke the last word in a low voice, and with a queer almost furtive glance that was even more expressive; It was at the end of a day’s work, and she looked very tired and pale. But then she seemed to pull herself together with an effort, lifting her face as she added: “But one mustn’t let it frighten one. One mustn’t try to understand.” On the whole he noticed that she seemed less exhausted and nerve racked than himself or either of the Simmonds. She seemed steadfastly calm and cheerful even in the most gruesome moments. In the midst of these dreary days and nights most strange of all were the quiet hours of the bungalow, like oases of peace and comfort in the grim desert of hardship. Trench would hardly have thought it possible that he could feel as relaxed and carefree as he did then. Sitting in the living-room when Valerie was there, he even forgot his own anxiety about hei'. She was a different girl from the one at the hospital. Tier pinkish linen costume. carefully laundered by Mrs. Simmonds's amah, showed a sky blue shirt at the throat; her length of brown silk leg ended in high-heeled buckskin sandals: her hair. brushed until it shone, was rather dry and flufi'y from frequent washings with disinfectant, and stood out in a fail' cloud round her face, making her eyes more dark and luminous. Every movement, he used Io think as he watched her. was beautiful. And she seernod quite happy, even gay.

He became aware that she was always the centre of the room for him, that if she hadn't been there the Simmonds would have bored him, and he would have thought of nothing but the epidemic.

They were not often there altogether; Simmonds usually led the conversation to the queer habits and attitudes of the Celestial people. He never tired of abusing his Military Governor, who had as yet made no move to put up the posters Trench had advised, or caution the people' about their careless treatment of sewage. Trench was more amused than angry. It might cost thousands of lives. But there was nothing to be done when the Chinese themselves held their lives so cheap. The soldiers hammered coffins together in the yard outside the hospital windows, because it saved the labour of bringing them ready made. Nobody, least of all the patients, seemed to care.

Simmonds said the relatives never got over their astonishment and contempt at his allowing the sick to die on the mission school premises—their spirits thereby making the place unhealthy for everybody else forever.

Mrs. Simmonds liked to talk about England, about the countryside, and all the familiar institutions that the exile thinks of as most typical of home. "What I used to miss most was the muffin bell,” said Mrs. Simmonds. “When I was a girl the muffin man used to come past at a quarter to five on winter evenings, ringing his bell. “The exile’s lament,” remarked Trench with a smile. “But here there is nothing but gongs!’ ” As a girl Mrs. Simmonds had lived at Richmond; her father, she explained, had been a doctor there. “I lived on Richmond Hill when I was a child, too!” said Valerie. “My mother loved Richmond, and so we had a house there. When the road traffic increased it was impossible for my father to get into town quickly enough, and we had to move. But I remember being taken for daily walks by my governess, usually into Richmond Park to see the deer. She used to sit on a seat and knit, while I used to play a heroine out of Walter Scott!" Closing his eyes as he sat in a chair at the window. Trench could fancy the majesty of tall trees standing in the mist which haunted all his memories of England; he pictured Valerie there, moving among the bracken, not as a child but as a graceful girl, vividly suggesting the part she used to play . . It was queer to open his eyes and look out over a tropical compound at the China Sea.

Later that clay at the hospital he was preparing saline solution when he began to whistle a tune —to find after some thought, that was the “Lass of Richmond Hill.” It had come unbidden into his head as a result of the mention of Richmond earlier in the day.

In the evening, at about nine o’clock, lie went back to the bungalow for a rest and a long delayed meal, and found Valerie at the piano, as he had once before. With the queer diffidence that came over him when he was alone with her, he hesitated before he spoke to her. Then he asked if she knew the "Lass of Richmond Hill."

“Of course,” she said, and her fingers ran into the tune immediately. "I know it very well,” she explained.

My mother used to play it to me when 1 was quite small. She used to sing it to me and say that I was the 'Lass of Richmond Hill.’ I used to be frightfully pleased with myself, and I think I really did believe that it had been made up especially for me. “I was a very spoiled little girl. 1 was very vain, and no wonder; I heard so much about myself. My curls, my manners, my clothes, toys, ponies, governess and what not, were the pride of the household including the servants. My father was always so busy that my mother had nothing to do but to make the entire home revolve about me. I was never sent to school. I think you would have thought me the worst kind of child!” “Would I?" He smiled too. There was a slight flush in her cheeks; she raised the thick fringe of her lashes, and for an instant he found himself looking into her eyes; the playful light died out in them, she seemed held helpless by his gaze for a moment. Then she looked quickly away She turned back to the piano, and Trench said, to break the tension of an atmosphere that had become electrical: “Probably you were very lonely!” “Yes,” she admitted. “There was nothing much to do except to pretend to be a heroine out of Walter Scott!” “What are the words of the ‘Lass of Richmond Hili’?” Trench asked. "How does it go?” She played the first bars for him and sang softly. Her voice, pure, but untrained, had a little quaver in it which charmed him. He was glad that she didn't sing in a confident, accomplished fashion. She stopped. "Oh, please," he said. She began again, but dropped her handkerchief, and Trench bent to pick it up: Valerie bent too, and their hands inadvertently touched as he gave it back to her. It only needed that—the touch of her hand, thrilling him with unexpected, electrical significance, to clarify all that was confused and evasive in Trench’s attitude towards her. He stood there while she went on playing, feeling profoundly disturbed and startled. This was no mixture of remorse and paternal admiration that he felt! He was in love with hoi—deeply and realistically in love. (To be continued.)