“THEY SAY SHE KILLED HIM”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 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 XVII. Tn those first days it never occurred to Trench to betray anything of what he felt for her. It was his turn then to think about Peter. Peter's ghost haunted him. Didn't it seem rather a rotten thing that he should forget Peter so utterly, and Valerie's part in Peter's death? Even though it was impossible to blame her. it seemed a betrayal to want to make love to her; to want her as Peter wanted her and—possibly—to succeed where Peter had failed.

The torment of self-conflict had its effect on him. He began to look strained and tired. Valerie herself noticed what she took to be a sudden coldness towards herself. He was no longer friendly. She began to fancy it might be that he had found some new cause for disapproval of her; and then concluded that it was because the work and' anxiety at the hospital was beginning to wear him out. He had introduced a full and complete course of treatment for all the patients who came in. It was difficult to deal with the Chinese assistants through Simmonds's interpretation, and there were frequent mistakes. But regimentation helped, and in the ward for the treatment of the early symptoms. a boy with a clock sat by a gong, and banged it every twenty minutes as a signal for the administration of permanganate pills; and cacti assistant, wrote a little round “O on each patient's chart.

But the matter of injecting pints of saline water, was one that only Trench could attend to. Hour after hour the giving of saline injections had to go on, he got little time for meals or for sleep; and it was not until it occurred to Trench that he might himself be infected. that he showed Simmonds- and Valerie how to get the needle into the vein.

The result of these efforts was a forty per cent, reduction in mortality within seven days.

"Good intentions aren’t much use by themselves.” Valerie said to Trench, with a smile. "I could have done nothing of what you have done; and yet I was the one who really wanted to come!”

Trench made no reply. He frequently answered her with a monosyllable. She could not understand why he had become so cold and aloof. Was he overtired, worn out with the constant strain of dealing with patients on the verge of death? Or was it. as she feared, because he had thought ■ better of forgiving her. and had decided to dislike her again?

She struggled on. trying to keep the usual friendly tone towards him, pretending not to see. Then one afternoon it was very hot, and the north-east monsoon season was as warm as English June; she was in the sterilised shed, and she had taken off her mask for a moment. Trench came in, saw her without it, and torture of anxiety he sometimes suffered about her suddenly found relief in a gust of fury:

"Where is your mask?” “I took it off for a moment because ii was so hot.”

Tn here, of all places! Have you no sense —or consideration.? I have enough cases on my hands!” White-hot rage was in his face, and voice. A flame of anger shot high in Valerie too. She had never, since their first interview, felt any anger against him; she had felt too full of guilt for anything but misery! But that he should be so kind to her. and then revert to hostility!” "He can’t speak to me like that!" said Valerie to herself, as she fumbled with trembling fingers, to put on her mask. She didn't trust herself to speak, but walked out of the sterilising shed without a word. When Trench saw her again, half an hour later, she turned her eyes away haughtily. Except to say, “yes” and “no” to his instructions and ask him a a question about a case in a still, formal little voice, she looked exactly as though he wasn’t there. He wanted to apologise, yet felt he couldn't do so without explaining everything; conscience, uncertainty of her reaction, both delayed him in doing that. And so in a torment of uncertainty he said nothing. In the meantime Trench found his luck improving in his work at the hospital. By chance he got the co-opera-lion of the Military Governor. The Governor, who had been a prosperous pirate in a big way of business before the regime of Dr. Sun Yat Sen, had at one time received instructions in British army drill from an expatriated ex-sergeant-major in the Worcesters. In the intervals between collecting taxes he made a habit of drilling his soldiers for an hour every morning in the barracks yard; and he bawled his orders in the true Western manner, while his ragged soldiers —whose wage.s were in arrears —shuffled to and fro in a manner altogether more Oriental. One morning, however, lie woke to find that his voice had dwindled to a whisper. He could drill no more soldiers. By noon his voice had vanished altogether. The Governor was filled with nameless terrors, as well as a very real fear that if lie could no longer give orders they would no longer be obeyed.

lie sent for the best Chinese physicians, who looked extraordinajily learned, and after consulting for a long time, informed him that he was suffering from a “death of the voice.” They offered to do nothing practical about il; and a healthy doubt about the wisdom of his ancestors beginning to enter the Governor's head, he sen! a messenger to the hospital to fetch Trench.

Trench went, to find the Governor in bed. with the women of his household

hovering round him. He believed, and they believed, that he was about to

(To be continued.)

Trench diagnosed a simple laryngitis, made up a prescription out oi what drugs he had, and offered it as a solution.

The Military Governor took three doses, and to the disgust of the Chinese physicians, who thought it all very unphilosophical, found that he could bawl his contempt for their methods. He was suitably grateful to Trench by word of mouth, and immediately sent down another three hundred mats to the hospital, and paid another twenty soldiers their arrears of wages on the understanding that they would work to help Trench in the hospital. Another helpful incident took place when Trench was called in to attend tire daughter of a wealthy household who was suffering from cholera. She was extremely ill, and the local physicians had advised them to prepare for the funeral without further delay; but her brother, a young man named Wu Ling, who had been to America and learned to speak English there, sent for Trench and asked for his help. Trench worked hard, and with a great deal of trouble, managed to bring her round. She developed a typhoid state and remained very ill. But her brother Wu. in an excess of gratitude, walked into the hospital one day and offered himself an assistant.

Trench was astonished, but glad of another interpreter, and Wu proved himself extremely useful. He was quick to grasp the principles behind the sanitation and the treatment. He dealt more easily with patients than Trench could do as a foreigner; henvas quite unafraid, and gave himself enthusiastically to the work. Trench showed him how to give intravenous salines, and was able to take some of the time off to rest that he so much needed.

About three days after his quarrel with Valerie, a blow fell which altered everything. Simmonds was down at the hospital alone while the other three were having dinner at the bungalow. At the end of the meal Li Che, the houseboy, came in. in wild agitation. Simmonds was out at the gate of the compound. “He very sick!’’ squeaked the boy “He lie on ground!" They went out and found Simmonds groaning in the dust with a crowd gathered round him al a cautious distance. They carried him in, using a cane chair as a stretcher. He was already on trie verge of collapse, having missed the preliminary stages of the disease. Poor Mrs. Simmonds stood moaning and helplessly wringing her hands. Valerie put Simmonds to bed and gave him china clay and water to drink, while Trench rushed down to the hospital for drugs and equipment. They worked all night over him. But Simmonds's heart was weak, and his agony was short. He died an hour or two before dawn. CHAPTER XVIII.

The dawn was cool and rosy, the young moon floated like a sliver of silver on the rim of the night; inland the rice fields already looked, pale, and the grey clumps of bamboo were tinted with light, matching the crests of those little waves of the calm ebb tide which crept so softly across the. sand. In the mirror-like shallows distant figures of wading fishermen stood almost motionless under umbrella-like hats, as they wielded their long poled nets . . . The air was fresh as the light was new. Trench and Valerie walked slowly along the shore.

After the close rooms of the bungalow, the tragic and useless labour of the night, with its sordid .and terrible end, the heavens seemed to open out above in unfathomable calm, in the infinite peace which heeds nothing of painful and dreary events on the earth

Beyond the compound wall, in the bungalow, Mrs. Simmonds was lying in a dark room, weeping, and thinking perhaps, of Richmond and of childish, happier times. Simmonds lay still under a sheet. His effort and its inspiration alike were ended. The door of the room was locked, one didn’t have to return immediately to burn the mattress and the sheets, and the rug beside, which was all that remained to be done for Simmonds, after he had been carried out to be laid in the earth by the church he had built. To the two walking on the shore in the dawn all grief, all struggle, all dispute seemed far away. Valerie was so tired that she had forgotten that she had quarrelled with Trench that afternoon; while to Trench all the small difficulties of life seemed have been levelled by the insuperable fact of death. It had seemed so intolerable inside, after there had been nothing more to do for Simmonds (or for his wife either) and so difficult to think of sleep, that when Trench came in from a visit to the hospital. Valerie had been ready to go witli him when lie suggested a walk in the air.

Valerie's face was pale, her eyes heavy with fatigue; to Trench it was infinitely pathetic as he looked down at it; and yet there was a buoyancy in her step and undaunted bravery as she lifted tier head and looked out to sea as she walked at his side. Her foot can;?,lit on a stone left in the wet sand by the tide, and she stumbled. Trench put his hand under her elbow to' steady her. He kept his hand there afterwards, and even while she leaned on his arm, she thought witli paradoxical absurdity: "He hates me!” But to Trench, his love for tier began to grow until it filled all the airy reality; threatened by time, by death, by all the dangers and horrors of the world about him. it became urgent and passionate, and he felt he must tell it to her.

expire, as his voice had done. And his wheezings and gaspings were enough like the strangled “cholera whisper" to add to their terror.