“What does she do with herself all day long?” asked Kitty.
“She paints a little and sometimes she writes a poem. But she mostly sits. She smokes, but only in moderation, which is fortunate, since one of my duties is to prevent the traffic in opium.”
“Do you smoke?” asked Kitty.
“Seldom. To tell you the truth I much prefer whisky.”
There was in the room a faintly acrid smell; it was not unpleasant, but peculiar and exotic.
“Tell her that I am sorry I cannot talk to her. I am sure we have many things to say to one another.”
When this was translated to the Manchu she gave Kitty a quick glance in which there was the hint of a smile. She was impressive as she sat, without embarrassment, in her beautiful clothes; and from the painted face the eyes looked out wary, self-possessed and unfathomable. She was unreal, like a picture, and yet had an elegance which made Kitty feel all thumbs. Kitty had never paid anything but passing and somewhat contemptuous attention to the China in which fate had thrown her. It was not done in her set. Now she seemed on a sudden to have an inkling of something remote and mysterious. Here was the East, immemorial, dark and inscrutable. The beliefs and the ideals of the West seemed crude beside ideals and beliefs of which in this exquisite creature she seemed to catch a fugitive glimpse. Here was a different life, lived on a different plane. Kitty felt strangely that the sight of this idol, with her painted face and slanting, wary eyes, made the efforts and the pains of the everyday world she knew slightly absurd. That coloured mask seemed to hide the secret of an abundant, profound and significant experience: those long, delicate hands with their tapering fingers held the key of riddles undivined.
“What does she think about all day long?” asked Kitty.
“Nothing,” smiled Waddington.
“She’s wonderful. Tell her I’ve never seen such beautiful hands. I wonder what she sees in you.”
Waddington, smiling, translated the question.
“She says I’m good.”
“As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue,” Kitty mocked.
The Manchu laughed but once. This was when Kitty, for something to say, expressed admiration of a jade bracelet she wore. She took it off and Kitty, trying to put it on, found, though her hands were small enough, that it would not pass over her knuckles. Then the Manchu burst into childlike laughter. She said something to Waddington and called for an amah. She gave her an instruction and the amah in a moment brought in a pair of very beautiful Manchu shoes.
“She wants to give you these if you can wear them,” said Waddington. “You’ll find they make quite good bedroom slippers.”
“They fit me perfectly,” said Kitty, not without satisfaction.
But she noticed a roguish smile on Waddington’s face.
“Are they too big for her?” she asked quickly.
“Miles.”
Kitty laughed and when Waddington translated, the Manchu and the amah laughed also.
When Kitty and Waddington, a little later, were walking up the hill together, she turned to him with a friendly smile.
“You did not tell me that you had a great affection for her.”
“What makes you think I have?”
“I saw it in your eyes. It’s strange, it must be like loving a phantom or a dream. Men are incalculable; I thought you were like everybody else and now I feel that I don’t know the first thing about you.”
As they reached the bungalow he asked her abruptly:
“Why did you want to see her?”
Kitty hesitated for a moment before answering.
“I’m looking for something and I don’t quite know what it is. But I know that it’s very important for me to know it, and if I did it would make all the difference. Perhaps the nuns know it; when I’m with them I feel that they hold a secret which they will not share with me. I don’t know why it came into my head that if I saw this Manchu woman I should have an inkling of what I am looking for. Perhaps she would tell me if she could.”
“What makes you think she knows it?”
Kitty gave him a sidelong glance, but did not answer. Instead she asked him a question.
“Do you know it?”
He smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
“Tao. Some of us look for the Way in opium and some in God, some of us in whisky and some in love. It is all the same Way and it leads nowhither.”
LIX
Kitty fell again into the comfortable routine of her work and though in the early morning feeling far from well she had spirit enough not to let it discompose her. She was astonished at the interest the nuns took in her: sisters who, when she saw them in a corridor, had done no more than bid her good morning now on a flimsy pretext came into the room in which she was occupied and looked at her, chatting a little, with a sweet and childlike excitement. Sister St. Joseph told her with a repetition which was sometimes tedious how she had been saying to herself for days past: “Now, I wonder,” or: “I shouldn’t be surprised”; and then, when Kitty fainted: “There can be no doubt, it jumps to the eyes.” She told Kitty long stories of her sister-in-law’s confinements, which but for Kitty’s quick sense of humour would have been not a little alarming. Sister St. Joseph combined in a pleasant fashion the realistic outlook of her upbringing (a river wound through the meadows of her father’s
