She had tiffined early, and before tiffin and since she had been out and about: shopping, paying calls, laughing, chatting, the brightest woman in Hong Kong, the best dressed, and the most care-free. And now she went out again, sitting radiant and chic in her smart chair, carried wherever she would be most seen. She stayed a little at the racquets court and at the cricket club. But she did not leave her chair. She was too tired—almost at the end of her woman’s long tether.
CHAPTER XLII
The Dust of China from Their Feet
THE Gregorys sailed from Hong Kong the next week, and half the Colony saw them off. One means, of course, half the Europeans: the Chinese don’t count—in China. But John Bradley did not see them off—nor had he come to wish them good-by. Hilda was offended, and Basil was grateful. (He could be grateful at times.) Except Florence, none of them had seen the priest since the night Basil had consulted him. Mrs. Gregory called upon him two days after her escape. She had sent a note asking him to come to her at the hotel. He had replied asking if she could, and kindly would, come to him instead; he knew she’d been out continuously the day before. And she had gone at once.
Of Kowloon she had told him nothing: when she had enjoined silence on Basil, she had meant silence; and she had no thought of breaking it towards any one.
She had wished to see him before they left Hong Kong, she said, and they were going home at once now.
Mrs. Gregory had a very sincere affection for John Bradley. If she had been in Hilda’s shoes, she’d not have given him for a wilderness of Tom Carrutherses, she thought. And in leaving Hong Kong she was leaving behind her nothing that she regretted more than her talks with Bradley; except Ah Wong. That was her great regret, for she was leaving Ah Wong.
The amah had refused to quit her country. Mrs. Gregory had pleaded at last. Ah Wong would not budge. Hilda was indifferent, Mr. Gregory not sorry, and Basil Gregory was meanly glad.
And John Bradley was glad, too, when he heard it, but not meanly. He knew that the amah knew more than any other living person did of all that had happened—far more than he knew or even suspected—and he was sure that her presence with them in England would make for a blight upon the entire Gregory family—a blight which all her devotion and all her deft service could not counterbalance.
It was partly concerning Ah Wong that Mrs. Gregory had called. Would he befriend the woman—her amah, perhaps he’d noticed her?—if he could ever?