The Pagan Madonna Read online

  CHAPTER II

  It was chance that brought Jane Norman into Shanghai. The Britishtransport, bound from Vladivostok to Hong-Kong, was destined to swing onher mudhook forty-eight hours. So Jane, a Red Cross nurse, relieved and onthe first leg of the journey home to the United States, decided to spendthose forty-eight hours in Shanghai, see the sights and do a littleshopping. Besides, she had seen nothing of China. On the way over,fourteen months since, she had come direct from San Francisco to theRussian port.

  Jane was one of those suffocating adventurers whom circumstance had fencedin. In fancy she beat her hands against the bars of this cage that had nodoor, but through which she could see the caravans of dreams. Sea room andsky room were the want of her, and no matter which way she turned--bars.Her soul craved colour, distances, mountain peaks; and about all she hadever seen were the white walls of hospital wards. It is not adventure totend the sick, to bind up wounds, to cheer the convalescing; it is a dullif angelic business.

  In her heart of hearts Jane knew that she had accepted the hardships ofthe Siberian campaign with the secret hope that some adventure mightbefall her--only to learn that her inexorable cage had travelled alongwith her. Understand, this longing was not the outcome of romanticalreading; it was in the marrow of her--inherent. She was not in search ofPrince Charming. She rarely thought of love as other young women think ofit. She had not written in her mind any particular event she wanted tohappen; but she knew that there must be colour, distance, mountain peaks.A few days of tremendous excitement; and then she acknowledged that shewould be quite ready to return to the old monotonous orbit.

  The Great War to Jane had not been romance and adventure; her imagination,lively enough in other directions, had not falsely coloured the stupendouscrime. She had accepted it instantly for what it was--pain, horror, death,hunger, and pestilence. She saw it as the genius of Vasili Vereshchaginand Emile Zola had seen it.

  The pioneer--after all, what was it he was truly seeking? Freedom! And assoon as ever civilization caught up with him he moved on. Withoutunderstanding it, that was really all Jane wanted--freedom. Freedom fromgenteel poverty, freedom from the white walls of hospitals, freedom fromexactly measured hours. Twenty four hours a day, all her own; that waswhat she wanted; twenty-four hours a day to do with as she pleased--tosleep in, play, laugh, sing, love in. Pioneers, explorers,adventurers--what else do they seek? Twenty-four hours a day, all theirown!

  At half after eight--about the time Ling Foo slid off his stool--thetender from the transport sloshed up to the customs jetty and landed Jane,a lone woman among a score of officers of various nationalities. But itreally wasn't the customs jetty her foot touched; it was the outer rim ofthe whirligig.

  Some officer had found an extra slicker for her and an umbrella. Possiblythe officer in olive drab who assisted her to the nearest covered 'rickshaand directed the placement of her luggage.

  "China!"

  "Yes, ma'am. Mandarin coats and oranges, jade and jasmine, Pekingese andred chow dogs."

  "Oh, I don't mean that kind!" she interrupted. "I should think these poor'ricksha boys would die of exposure."

  "Manchus are the toughest human beings on earth. I'll see you in themorning?"

  "That depends," she answered, "upon the sun. If it rains I shall lie abedall day. A real bed! Honour bright, I've often wondered if I should eversee one again. Fourteen months in that awful world up there! Siberia!"

  "You're a plucky woman."

  "Somebody had to go. Armenia or Siberia, it was all the same to me if Icould help." She held out her hand. "Good-night, captain. Thank you forall your kindness to me. Ten o'clock, if it is sunshiny. You're to show methe shops. Oh, if I were only rich!"

  "And what would you do if you had riches?"

  "I'd buy all the silk at Kai Fook's--isn't that the name?--and roll myselfup in it like a cocoon."

  The man laughed. He understood. A touch of luxury, after all theseindescribable months of dirt and disease, rain and snow and ice, among apeople who lived like animals, who had the intelligence of animals. Whenhe spoke the officer's voice was singularly grave:

  "These few days have been very happy ones for me. At ten--if the sunshines. Good-night."

  The 'rickshas in a wavering line began to roll along the Bund, which waspractically deserted. The lights shone through slanting lattices of rain.Twice automobiles shot past, and Jane resented them. China, the flowerykingdom! She was touched with a little thrill of exultation. But oh, toget home, home! Never again would she long for palaces and servants andall that. The little wooden-frame house and the garden would be paradiseenough. The crimson ramblers, the hollyhocks, the bachelor's-buttons, andthe peonies, the twisted apple tree that never bore more than enough forone pie! Her throat tightened.

  She hadn't heard from the mother in two months, but there would be mail atHong-Kong. Letters and papers from home! Soon she would be in the sittingroom recounting her experiences; and the little mother would listenpolitely, even doubtfully, but very glad to have her back. How odd it was!In the mother the spirit of adventure never reached beyond the gardengate, while in the daughter it had always been keen for the far places.And in her first adventure beyond the gate, how outrageously she had beencheated! She had stepped out of drab and dreary routine only to enter adrabber and drearier one.

  What a dear boy this American officer was! He seemed to have beeneverywhere, up and down the world. He had hunted the white orchid ofBorneo; he had gone pearl hunting in the South Seas; and he knew MonteCarlo, London, Paris, Naples, Cairo. But he never spoke of home. She hadcleverly led up to it many times in the past month, but always he hadunembarrassedly switched the conversation into another channel.

  This puzzled her deeply. From the other Americans she never heard ofanything but home, and they were all mad to get there. Yet CaptainDennison maintained absolute silence on that topic. Clean shaven, bronzed,tall, and solidly built, clear-eyed, not exactly handsome butengaging--what lay back of the man's peculiar reticence? Being a daughterof Eve, the mystery intrigued her profoundly.

  Had he been a professional sailor prior to the war? It seemed to her ifthat had been the case he would have enlisted in the Navy. He talked likea man who had spent many years on the water; but in labour or in pleasure,he made it most difficult for her to tell. Of his people, of his past, notBluebeard's closet was more firmly shut. Still with a little smile sherecalled that eventually a woman had opened that closet door, and hadn'thad her head cut off, either.

  He was poor like herself. That much was established. For he had saidfrankly that when he received his discharge from the Army he would have todig up a job to get a meal ticket.

  Dear, dear! Would she ever see a continuous stretch of sunshine again? Howthis rain tore into things! Shanghai! Wouldn't it be fun to have athousand dollars to fling away on the shops? She wanted jade beads,silks--not the quality the Chinese made for export, but that heavy, shiverstuff that was as strong and shielding as wool--ivory carvings, littlebronze Buddhas with prayer scrolls inside of them, embroidered jackets.But why go on? She had less than a hundred, and she would have to carryhome gimcracks instead of curios.

  They were bobbing over a bridge now, and a little way beyond she saw thelighted windows of the great caravansary, the Astor House. It smacked ofold New York, where in a few weeks she would be stepping back into thedull routine of hospital work.

  She paid the ricksha boy and ran into the lobby, stamping her feet andshaking the umbrella. The slicker was an overhead affair, and she had totake off her hat to get free. This act tumbled her hair aboutconsiderably, and Jane Norman's hair was her glory. It was the tint of thecopper beech, thick, finespun, with intermittent twists that gave it awavy effect.

  Jane was not beautiful; that is, her face was not--it was comely. It washer hair that turned male heads. It was then men took note of her body.She was magnificently healthy, and true health is a magnet as powerful asthat of the true pole. It drew toward her men and women and children. Hereyes were
gray and serious; her teeth were white and sound. She wastwenty-four.

  There was, besides her hair, another thing that was beautiful--her voice.It answered like the G string of an old Strad to every emotion. One couldtell instantly when she was merry or sad or serious or angry. She couldnot hide her emotions any more than she could hide her hair. As a warnurse she had been adored by the wounded men and fought over by thehospital commandants. But few men had dared make love to her. She had thatpeculiar gift of drawing and repelling without consciousness.

  As the Chinese boy got her things together Jane espied the bookstall.American newspapers and American magazines! She packed four or five ofeach under her arm, nodded to the boy, and followed the manager to thelift! She hoped the lights would hang so that she could lie in bed andread. Her brain was thirsty for a bit of romance.

  Humming, she unpacked. She had brought one evening gown, hoping she mighthave a chance to wear it before it fell apart from disuse. She shook outthe wrinkles and hung the gown in the closet. Lavender! She raised a foldof the gown and breathed in rapturously that homy perfume. She sighed.Perhaps she would have to lay away all her dreams in lavender.

  A little later she sat before the dressing mirror, combing her hair. Howit happened she never could tell, but she heard a crash upon the woodfloor, and discovered her hand mirror shattered into a thousandsplinters.

  Seven years' bad luck! She laughed. Fate had blundered. The mirror hadfallen seven years too late.