Harold MacGrath - The Pagan Madonna

Jane was one of those suffocating adventurers whom circumstance had fenced in. In fancy she beat her hands against the bars of this cage that had no door, but through which she could see the caravans of dreams. Sea room and sky 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 had ever seen were the white walls of hospital wards. It is not adventure to tend the sick, to bind up wounds, to cheer the convalescing; it is a dull if angelic business.

In her heart of hearts Jane knew that she had accepted the hardships of the Siberian campaign with the secret hope that some adventure might befall her – only to learn that her inexorable cage had travelled along with her. Understand, this longing was not the outcome of romantical reading; it was in the marrow of her – inherent. She was not in search of Prince Charming. She rarely thought of love as other young women think of it. She had not written in her mind any particular event she wanted to happen; but she knew that there must be colour, distance, mountain peaks. A few days of tremendous excitement; and then she acknowledged that she would 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 stupendous crime. She had accepted it instantly for what it was – pain, horror, death, hunger, and pestilence. She saw it as the genius of Vasili Vereshchagin and Émile Zola had seen it.

The pioneer – after all, what was it he was truly seeking? Freedom! And as soon as ever civilization caught up with him he moved on. Without understanding it, that was really all Jane wanted – freedom. Freedom from genteel poverty, freedom from the white walls of hospitals, freedom from exactly measured hours. Twenty four hours a day, all her own; that was what she wanted; twenty-four hours a day to do with as she pleased – to sleep in, play, laugh, sing, love in. Pioneers, explorers, adventurers – what else do they seek? Twenty-four hours a day, all their own!

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

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

“China!”

“Yes, ma’am. Mandarin coats and oranges, jade and jasmine, Pekingese and red 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 the morning?”

“That depends,” she answered, “upon the sun. If it rains I shall lie abed all day. A real bed! Honour bright, I’ve often wondered if I should ever see 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 I could help.” She held out her hand. “Good-night, captain. Thank you for all your kindness to me. Ten o’clock, if it is sunshiny. You’re to show me the 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 myself up in it like a cocoon.”

The man laughed. He understood. A touch of luxury, after all these indescribable months of dirt and disease, rain and snow and ice, among a people who lived like animals, who had the intelligence of animals. When he spoke the officer’s voice was singularly grave:

“These few days have been very happy ones for me. At ten – if the sun shines. Good-night.”

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

She hadn’t heard from the mother in two months, but there would be mail at Hong-Kong. Letters and papers from home! Soon she would be in the sitting room recounting her experiences; and the little mother would listen politely, even doubtfully, but very glad to have her back. How odd it was! In the mother the spirit of adventure never reached beyond the garden gate, 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 been cheated! She had stepped out of drab and dreary routine only to enter a drabber and drearier one.

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

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

Had he been a professional sailor prior to the war? It seemed to her if that had been the case he would have enlisted in the Navy. He talked like a 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, not Bluebeard’s closet was more firmly shut. Still with a little smile she recalled that eventually a woman had opened that closet door, and hadn’t had her head cut off, either.

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

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

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

She paid the ricksha boy and ran into the lobby, stamping her feet and shaking the umbrella. The slicker was an overhead affair, and she had to take off her hat to get free. This act tumbled her hair about considerably, and Jane Norman’s hair was her glory. It was the tint of the copper beech, thick, finespun, with intermittent twists that gave it a wavy effect.