The sockets of Tulloch’s eyes filled up with shadow. He yielded to an unaccountable weariness. The priest felt rather than heard the last faint sigh. The room was suddenly more quiet. Still holding the body, as a mother might hold her child, he began blindly, in a low and strangled voice, the De Profundis.
‘Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord, hear my voice … because with the Lord there is mercy: and with him plentiful redemption.’
He rose at last, closed the eyes, composed the limp hands.
As he went out of the room he saw Sister Maria-Veronica still bowed at the window. As though still within a dream he gazed at the Lieutenant. He saw, in a kind of dim surprise, that Shon’s shoulders were shaking convulsively.
VI
The plague had passed, but a great apathy gripped the snow-bound land. In the country the rice fields were frozen lakes. The few remaining peasants could not work a soil so mercilessly entombed. There was no sign of life. In the town survivors emerged as from a painful hibernation, began dully to gather up their daily lives. The merchants and magistrates had not yet returned. It was said that many distant roads were quite impassable. None could remember such evil weather. All the passes were reported blocked and avalanches hurtled down the distant Kwangs like puffs of pure white smoke. The river, in its upper reaches, was frozen solid, a great grey wasteland over which the wind drove powder snow, in blinding desolation. Lower down there was a channel. Huge lumps of ice crashed and pounded in the current under the Manchu Bridge. Hardship was in every home and famine lurked not far behind.
One boat had risked the jagged floes and steamed up-river from Sen-siang, bringing food and medical comforts from the Leighton Expedition, and a long-delayed packet of letters. After a brief stay it had cast off, taking the remaining members of Dr Tulloch’s party back to Nankin.
In the mail which arrived one communication surpassed the others in importance. As Father Chisholm came slowly up from the end of the mission garden where a small wooden cross marked Dr Tulloch’s grave, he bore this letter in his hand and his thoughts were busy with the visit it announced. He hoped his work was satisfactory – the mission was surely worthy of his pride in it. If only the weather would break – thaw quickly – in the next two weeks!
When he reached the church Mother Maria-Veronica was coming down the steps. He must tell her – though he had come to dread these rare occasions when official business forced him to break the silence which lay between them.
‘Reverend Mother … the provincial administrator of our Foreign Missions Society, Canon Mealey, is making a tour of inspection of the Chinese missions. He sailed five weeks ago. He will arrive in about a month’s time … to visit us.’ He paused. ‘I thought you’d like to have notice … in case there is anything you wish to put before him.’
Muffled against the cold, she raised her gaze, impenetrable, behind the rimmed vapour of her breath. Yet she started faintly. Now she so seldom saw him closely, the change which those last weeks had brought was strikingly manifest. He was thin, quite emaciated. The bones of his face had become prominent, the skin drawn tighter, cheeks slightly sunken, so that his eyes seemed larger and oddly luminous. A terrible impulse took possession of her.
‘There is only one thing I wish to put before him.’ She spoke instinctively, the sudden news lifting from the recesses of her soul a deeply buried thought. ‘I shall ask to be transferred to another mission.’
There was a long pause. Though not wholly taken by surprise, he felt chilled, defeated. He sighed. ‘ You are unhappy here?’
‘Happiness has nothing to do with it. As I told you, when I entered the religious life I prepared myself to endure everything.’
‘Even the enforced association of someone whom you despise?’
She coloured with a proud defiance. That deep throbbing in her bosom drove her to continue. ‘You mistake me completely. It is obvious. It is something deeper … spiritual.’
‘Spiritual? Will you try to tell me?’
‘I feel’ – she took a quick breath – ‘that you are upsetting me … in my inner life … my spiritual beliefs.’
‘That is a serious matter.’ He stared at the letter unseeingly, twisting it in his bony hands. ‘ It hurts me … as much, I am sure, as it hurts you to say it. But perhaps you have misunderstood me. To what do you refer?’
‘Do you think I have prepared a list?’ Despite her control she felt her agitation rising. ‘It is your attitude . . For instance, some remarks you made when Dr Tulloch was dying … and afterwards, when he was dead.’
‘Please go on.’
‘He was an atheist, and yet you virtually promised he would have his eternal reward… he who didn’t believe …’
He said quickly: ‘ God judges us not only by what we believe … but by what we do.’
‘He was not a Catholic … not even a Christian!’
‘How do you define a Christian? One who goes to church one day of the seven and lies, slanders, cheats his fellow men the other six?’ He smiled faintly. ‘Dr Tulloch didn’t live like that. And he died – helping others … like Christ himself.’
She repeated stubbornly: ‘He was a free-thinker.’
‘My child, our Lord’s contemporaries thought him a dreadful free-thinker … that’s why they killed him.’
She was pale now, quite distraught. ‘It is inexcusable to make such a comparison – outrageous!’
‘I wonder! … Christ was a very tolerant man – and humble.’
A rush of colour again flooded her cheek. ‘He made certain rules. Your Dr Tulloch did not obey them. You know that. Why, when he was unconscious, at the end, you did not even administer extreme unction.’
‘No, I didn’t! And perhaps I should have.’ He stood, thinking worriedly, rather depressed. Then he seemed to cheer up. ‘But the good God may forgive him none the less.’ He paused, with simple frankness. ‘ Didn’t you love him too?’
She hesitated, lowered her eyes. ‘Yes … Who could help that?’
‘Then don’t let us make his memory the occasion of a quarrel. There is one thing we most of us forget. Christ taught it. The Church teaches it … though you wouldn’t think so to hear a great many of us today. No one in good faith can ever be lost. No one. Buddhists, Mohammedans, Taoists … the blackest cannibals who ever devoured a missionary … If they are sincere, according to their own lights, they will be saved. That is the splendid mercy of God. So why shouldn’t He enjoy confronting a decent agnostic at the Judgement Seat with a twinkle in his eye: “I’m here you see, in spite of all they brought you up to believe. Enter the Kingdom which you honestly denied.”’ He made to smile, then, seeing her expression, sighed and shook his head. ‘ I’m truly sorry you feel as you do. I know I’m hard to get on with, and perhaps a little odd in my beliefs. But you’ve worked so wonderfully here … the children love you … and during the plague …’ He broke off. ‘I know we haven’t got on very well … but the mission would suffer terribly if you should go.’
He gazed at her with a queer intentness, a sort of strained humility. He waited for her to speak. Then, as she did not, he slowly took his leave.
She continued on her way to the refectory where she superintended the serving of the children’s dinner. Later, in her own bare room, she paced up and down in a strange continuance of her agitation. Suddenly, with a gesture of despair, she sat down and set herself to complete a further passage in another of those lengthy letters in which, from day to day, as the outlet for her emotions, a penance and a consolation, she compiled the record of her doings for her brother.
Pen in hand, she seemed calmer; the act of writing seemed to tranquillize her. ‘ I have just told him I must ask to be transferred. It came suddenly, a sort of climax to all I have suppressed, and something of a threat as well. I was amazed at myself, startled by the words issuing from my lips. Yet when the opportunity presented itself I could not resist, I wanted instantly to startle, to hurt him. But, my dear dear Ernst, I am no happi
er … After that second of triumph when I saw dismay cloud his face I am even more restless and distressed. I look out at the vast desolation of these grey wastes – so different from our cosy winter landscape with its golden air, its sleighbells and clustered chalet roofs – and I want to cry … as if my heart would break.
‘It is his silence which defeats me – that stoic quality of enduring, and of fighting, all without speech. I’ve told you of his work during the plague, when he went about amongst foul sickness and sudden repulsive death as carelessly as if he were walking down the main street of his dreadful Scottish village. Well, it wasn’t merely his courage, but the muteness of that courage, which was so unbelievably heroic. When his friend, the doctor, died, he held him in his arms, unmindful of the contagion, of that final cough which spattered his cheek with clotted blood. And the look upon his face … in its compassion and utter selflessness … it pierced my heart. Only my pride saved me the humiliation of weeping in his sight! Then I became angry. What irks me most of all is that I once wrote you that he was despicable. Ernst, I was wrong, – what an admission from your stubborn sister! – I can no longer despise him. Instead I despise myself. But I detest him. And I won’t, I won’t let him beat me down to his level of harrowing simplicity.
‘The two others here have both been conquered. They love him – that is another mortification I must sustain. Martha, the stolid peasant, with bunions but no brains, is prepared to adore anything in a cassock. But Clotilde, shy and timid, flushing on the slightest provocation, a gently sweet and sensitive creature, has become a perfect devotee. During her enforced quarantine she worked him a thick quilted bed-mat, soft and warm, really beautiful. She took it to Joseph, his servant, with instructions to place it on the Father’s bed – she is much too modest even to whisper the word “bed” in his hearing. Joseph smiled: “I am sorry, Sister, there is no bed!” It appears he sleeps upon the bare floor, with no covering but his overcoat, a greenish garment of uncertain age, which he is fond of, and of which, caressing the frayed and threadbare sleeves, he says proudly, “Actually! I had it when I was a student at Holywell!”
‘Martha and Clotilde have been making inquiries in his kitchen, nervous and perturbed, convinced that he does not look after himself. Their expressions, like shocked tabbies, almost made me laugh as they told me what I already knew, that he eats nothing but black bread, potatoes and bean curd.
‘“Joseph has instructions to boil a pot of potatoes and place them in a wicker basket,” Clotilde mewed. “ He eats one cold when he is hungry, dipping it in bean curd. Often they are quite musty before the basketful is finished.”
‘“Isn’t it dreadful?” I answered curtly. “But then some stomachs have never known a good cuisine – it is not hardship for them to do without it.”
‘“Yes, Reverend Mother,” murmured Clotilde, blushing, and retreating.
‘She would do penance for a week to come and see him eat one nice hot meal. Oh, Ernst, you know how I abominate the sedulous and fawning nun who in the presence of a priest exposes the whites of her eyes and dissolves in obsequious rapture. Never, never, will I descend to such a level. I vowed it at Coblenz when I took the veil, and again at Liverpool … and will keep that vow … even in Pai-tan. But bean curd! You will not encounter it. A thin pinkish paste tasting of stagnant water and chewed wood!’ She raised her head at an unexpected sound. ‘Ernst … It is unbelievable … it is raining …’ She stopped writing, as if unable to continue, and slowly laid down her pen. With dark and self-distrustful eyes she sat watching the novelty of the rain, which trickled down the pane like heavy tears.
A fortnight later it was still raining. The skies, dull as tallow, were open sluices from which a steady deluge fell. The drops were large, pitting the upper crust of yellowish snow. It seemed everlasting … the snow. Great frozen slabs of it still came sliding from the church roof, with unpremeditated acceleration, landing soddenly upon the slushy snow beneath. Rivulets of rain went rushing across the dun-coloured sludge, channelling, undercutting the banks, which toppled with a slow splash into the stream beneath. The mission was a quagmire of slush.
Then the first patch of brown earth appeared, momentous as the tip of Ararat. Further patches sprouted and coalesced, forming a landscape of bleached grass and scabby desert all fissured and cratered with the flood. And still the rain continued. The mission roofs broke down at last and leaked incessantly. Water came in cataracts from the eaves. The children sat, green and miserable, in the classroom, while Sister Martha placed pails for the larger drips. Sister Clotilde had a dreadful cold and took lessons at her desk beneath Reverend Mother’s umbrella.
The light soil of the mission garden could not withstand the scouring fusion of rain and thaw. It swept down the hill in a yellow turbulence on which floated uptorn sareta plants and oleander shrubs. Carp from the fish pond darted, frightened, through the flood. The trees were slowly undermined. For a painful day the lychees and catalpas stood upright on their naked roots, which groped like pallid tentacles, then slowly toppled. The young white mulberries followed next, then the lovely row of flowering plum, these on the day that the lower wall was washed away. Only the toughened cedars stood, with the giant banyan, amidst the muddied desolation.
On the afternoon before Canon Mealey’s arrival Father Chisholm heavily surveyed the dreary havoc, on his way to children’s benediction. He turned to Fu, the gardener, who stood beside him.
‘I wished for a thaw. The good God has punished me by sending one.’
Fu, like most gardeners, was not a cheerful man. ‘ The great Shang-Foo who arrives from across the seas will think much ill of us. Ah! If only he had seen my bloom of lilies last spring!’
‘Let us be of good heart, Fu. The damage is not irreparable.’
‘My plantings are lost.’ Fu gloomed. ‘We shall have to begin all over again.’
‘That is life … to begin again when everything is lost!’
Despite his exhortation, Francis was deeply depressed as he went into the church. Kneeling before the lighted altar, while the rain still drummed upon the roof, he seemed to hear, above the childish treble of the Tantum Ergo, a liquid murmuring beneath him. But the sound of flowing water had long been echoing in his ears. His mind was burdened by the wretched appearance which the mission must present to his visitor upon the following day. He put the thing away as an obsession.
When the service was over and Joseph had snuffed the candles and left the sacristy he came slowly down the aisle. A dank vapour hung about the whitewashed nave. Sister Martha had taken the children across the compound for their supper. But still in prayer upon the damp boards were Reverend Mother and Sister Clotilde. He passed them in silence; then suddenly stopped short. Clotilde’s running head catarrh made her a spectacle of woe and Maria-Veronica’s lips were drawn with cold. He had an extraordinary inner conviction that they should neither of them be allowed to remain.
He stepped back to them and said: ‘I am sorry, I’m going to close the church now.’
There was a pause. This interference was unlike him. They seemed surprised. But they rose obediently, in silence, and preceded him to the porch. He locked the front doors and followed them through the streaming dusk.
A moment later the sound broke upon them. A low rumble, swelling to a roll of subterranean thunder. As Sister Clotilde screamed, Francis swung round to see the slender structure of his church in motion. Glistening, wetly luminous, it swayed gracefully in the fading light; then like a reluctant woman, yielded. His heart stood still in horror. With a rending crash, the undermined foundations broke. One side caved in, the roofs spire snapped, the rest was a blinding vision of torn timbers and shattered glass. Then his church, his lovely church, lay dissolved into nothing, at his feet.
He stood rooted, for an instant, in a daze of pain, then ran towards the wreckage. But the altar lay smashed to rubble, the tabernacle crushed to splinters beneath a beam. He could not even save the sacred species. And his vestments, the precio
us Ribiero relic, these were in shreds. Standing there, bare-headed in the teeming rain, he was conscious, amidst the frightened babble which now surrounded him, of Sister Martha’s lamentations.
‘Why … why … why has this come on us?’ She was moaning, wringing her hands. ‘Dear God! What worse could you have done to us?’
He muttered, not moving, desperately sustaining his own faith rather than hers:
‘Ten minutes sooner … we should every one of us have been killed.’ There was nothing to be done. They left the fallen wreckage to the darkness and the rain.
Next day, at three o’clock punctually, Canon Mealey arrived. Because of the turbulence of the flooded river, his junk had dropped anchor in a backwater five li below Pai-tan. There were no chairs available: only some wheelbarrows, long-shafted like ploughs, with solid wooden wheels which, since the plague, were used by the few remaining runners to transport their passengers. The situation was difficult for a man of dignity. But there was no alternative. The Canon, mud-spattered and with dangling legs, reached the mission in a wheelbarrow.
The modest reception rehearsed by Sister Clotilde – a song of welcome with waving of little flags, by the children – had been abandoned. Watching from his balcony, Father Chisholm hurried to the gate to meet his visitor.
‘My dear Father!’ cried Mealey, stiffly straightening himself and warmly grasping both Francis’ hands. ‘This is the happiest day in many months – to see you again. I told you I should one day run the gamut of the Orient. With the interest of the world centred upon suffering China it was inevitable my resolve should crystallize to action!’ He broke off, his eyes bulging across the other’s shoulder at the scene of desolation. ‘Why … I don’t understand. Where is the church?’