On a Chinese Screen

by W. Somerset Maugham

"Very," I answered.

A somewhat priggish young man possibly, but priggishness is a pardonable defect in youth, and here it was certainly counterbalanced by the appealing wistfulness of the expression. It was a fine, a sensitive, and even a beautiful face, and those disconsolate eyes were strangely moving. There was fanaticism there, perhaps, but there was the courage that would not fear martyrdom; there was a charming idealism; and its youth, its ingenuousness, warmed one's heart.

"A most attractive face," I said as I returned the photograph.

Dr. Macalister gave a chuckle.

"That's what I looked like when I first came out to China," he said.

It was a photograph of himself.

"No one recognises it," smiled Mrs. Macalister.

"It was the very image of me," he said.

He spread out the tails of his black coat and planted himself more firmly in front of the fire.

"I often laugh when I think of my first impressions of China," he said. "I came out expecting to undergo hardships and privations. My first shock was the steamer with ten-course dinners and first-class accommodation. There wasn't much hardship in that, but I said to myself: wait till you get to China. Well, at Shanghai I was met by some friends and I stayed in a fine house and was waited on by fine servants and I ate fine food. Shanghai, I said, the plague spot of the East. It'll be different in the interior. At last I reached here. I was to stay with the head of the mission till my own quarters were ready. He lived in a large compound. He had a very nice house with American furniture in it and I slept in a better bed than I'd ever slept in. He was very fond of his garden and he grew all kinds of vegetables in it. We had salads just like the salads we had in America and fruit, all kinds of fruit; he kept a cow and we had fresh milk and butter. I thought I'd never eaten so much and so well in my life. You did nothing for yourself. If you wanted a glass of water you called a boy and he brought it to you. It was the beginning of summer when I arrived and they were all packing up to go to the hills. They hadn't got bungalows then, but they used to spend the summer in a temple. I began to think I shouldn't have to put up with much privation after all. I had been looking forward to a martyr's crown. Do you know what I did?"