Page:Fear by W. Somerset Maugham.djvu/2

Rh never before seen in a missionary's house. There was a Chinese carpet on the floor. Chinese pictures, old ones, hung on the yellow walls. Two or three Ming tiles gave a dash of color. In the middle of the room was a black-wood table, elaborately carved, and on it was a figure in white porcelain. I made a trivial remark.

"I don't much care for all these Chinese things meself," answered my hostess, briskly, "but Mr. Wingrove's set on them. I 'd clear them all out if I had my way."

I laughed, though not because I was amused; and then I caught in Mr. Wingrove's eyes a flash of icy hatred, so that I was astonished. But it passed in a moment.

"We won't have them if you don't like them, my dear," he said gently. "They can be put away."

"Oh, I don't mind them if they please you."

We began to talk about my journey, and in the course of conversation I happened to ask Mr. Wingrove how long it was since he had been in England.

"Seventeen years" he said.

I was surprised.

"But I thought you had one year's furlough every seven?"

"Yes, but I haven't cared to go."

"Mr. Wingrove thinks it 's bad for the work to go away for a year like that," explained his wife. "Of course I don't care to go without him."

I wondered how it was that he had ever come to China. The actual details of the call fascinate me, and often enough you find people who are willing to talk of it, though you have to form your own opinion on the matter less from the words they say than from the implications of them; but I did not feel that Mr. Wingrove was a man who would be induced either directly or indirectly to speak of that intimate experience. He evidently took his work very seriously.

"Are there other foreigners here?" I asked.

"No."

"It must be very lonely," I said.

"I think I prefer it so," he answered, looking at one of the pictures on the wall. "They'd only be business people, and you know"— he smiled—"they haven't much use for missionaries. And they're not so intellectual that it is a great hardship to be deprived of their company."

"And of course we 're not really alone, you know/' said Mrs. Wingrove. "We have two evangelists, and then there are two young ladies who teach. And there are the school-children."

Tea was brought in, and we gossiped desultorily. Mr, Wingrove seemed to speak with effort, and I had increasingly that feeling in him of perturbed repression. He had pleasing manners and was certainly trying to be cordial, and yet I had a sense of effort. I led the conversation to Oxford, mentioning various friends whom he might know.

"It's so long since I left home," he said, "and I haven't kept up with any one. There's a great deal of work in a mission like this and it absorbs one."

I thought he was exaggerating a little, so I remarked:

"Well, by the number of books you have I take it that you get a certain amount of time for reading."

"I very seldom read," he answered with abruptness, in a voice that I knew already was not quite his own.

I was a little surprised, and now I began to be more puzzled. There was