his amah set before Denton in the Deanery were rich and plentiful. And it wasn't till the plate was empty, Denton having politely declined the last cake - which the Dean promptly popped whole into his mouth - that with preliminary throat-clearing he broached spiritual matters.
'Well, John,' he said as he dabbed his thin, crumb-laden lips with his napkin, 'Shanghai is very interesting of course, but it does offer many ...' his lids lowered tactfully '... many temptations. Which it is often hard for young men to resist out here. Immorality, particularly in relations between the sexes, is, I'm afraid, a byword.' He paused to confront Denton uncompromisingly with his deep-set hazel eyes. 'A byword,' he repeated sternly. 'As I expect you may have noticed.'
Thinking of the Chinese girl in Mason's room, Denton blushed, as though he himself were guilty. Perhaps he was guilty, the thought occurred to him as Mr Eaton finished, for his recollection of the girl was somehow fascinating and thrilling. 'Well, yes,' he said uneasily, 'I have noticed something of the kind.'
'A byword.' The Dean nodded emphatically, his eyes still probing Denton's. 'Our Christian Youth Fellowship is a bulwark against that kind of temptation.'
Denton recalled the high, rouged cheekbones of the Chinese girl, her pale, slim legs beneath Mason's hanging tunic. Were Emily's legs as pale and slim? He caught himself blushing again under the Dean's disconcerting unblinking gaze. 'Er, as a matter of fact I'm engaged,' he muttered defensively.
'Already?' The Dean's white brows arched in disapproving incredulity.
'Oh no, not out here,' he spluttered hastily. 'I mean before I left home. We got engaged before I left.'
'Ah, I see.' The Dean's eyes relaxed their grip, and slowly let him go at last. He leant back with a sigh of relief folding his hands behind his back. There were damp sweat marks under the arms of his white cassock. 'And when is your fiancée coming out to join you?'
'Well, she has to finish her course first - she's training to be a teacher - and then it's, er, well, a question of money really.'
The Dean nodded understandingly, then, glancing up at the failing punkah over their heads, called out in an unexpectedly sharp voice. Slowly the punkah's wing-like flapping quickened and the cooler air fanned their faces in continual draughts once more.
'These people are really incorrigible, you know, John,' he smiled resignedly, shaking his head. 'Always going to sleep. One mustn't blame them too much of course, but it's most irritating. The heat has affected their pulses over the centuries, you see. Their pulses are slow and languid now, they are completely enervated. But we are making gradual progress.' He held up his hand when Denton nodded, as though warding off any interruption, however sympathetic. 'We are making gradual progress. My friends in the out-stations tell me, for instance, that more and more of the natives are joining their churches. We may yet see a truly Christian China in the not too distant future. Not I, perhaps,' he smiled a theatrically wry smile, shaking his grey head again in rueful recognition of his years, 'but you may. And it is people like you who must set the example, John. The white man, the Christian in China. We are all of us missionaries in our way, not just the clergy.'
The Dean turned to look at the amah, sleek and plump in her white tunic and wide black trousers. She was calling in a quiet, sibilant whisper from the door, smiling widely.
'Master, the man come.'
The Dean rose with sudden energy and went to meet a tall, thin Chinese in a long grey silk gown who was already gliding into the room. The amah's whisper, and the Dean's haste, as if he didn't want Denton to see his visitor, suggested something confidential, or even secret, and Denton stood up awkwardly, ready to leave.
'Good afternoon, Reverend,' the Chinese said loudly, his eyes smiling behind his rimless glasses. Then, after only a moment's hesitation. 'Good afternoon, Mr Den-tong. How is my friend Mr May-song?'
Denton frowned in puzzlement, then, noticing the man's long, curved nail, suddenly remembered. It was Mr Ching of course, the agent from the Russian ship.
'You know each other?' the Dean asked, on a note of almost displeased surprise.
'I have met Mr Den-tong in the lines of duty,' Ching answered, smiling gaily. 'If I may have a few words with you, Reverend, I will not intrude on your pleasant chatting any longer.'
The Dean ushered him out of the room without a backward glance, closing the door behind them. Denton sat down again, gazing up at the white-washed ceiling, where the punkah, as if on a signal, was wearily slowing and resting. He felt his nerves slackening and resting too, and realised how tense he was with the Dean, as tense as he was with nearly everyone, he thought sadly.
When the Dean returned a few minutes later, the punkah at once began its regular sweep again. 'A little business matter,' he apologised. 'A little property I am negotiating to buy in Hongkew. If you ever have the opportunity to invest in land in Hongkew, John,' his voice strengthened, losing that faintly disconcerted and embarrassed tone it had had when Ching was in the room, 'I strongly advise you to do so. I understand that property prices are bound to appreciate there as Shanghai continues to expand.'
'Oh I see.'
'Yes indeed. And now that you're contemplating matrimony,' he wagged his finger genially, 'You have an obligation to think of the future, eh?'
'Yes, I suppose so,' Denton smiled sheepishly.
'Now where were we? Oh yes, the Christian Youth Fellowship. We're having our next meeting on Thursday. A little talk about the doctrines of Dr Pusey and the position of the Church of England with regard to the sacraments.' His voice, alert and energetic when he talked about property, was taking on its stately, pious tone again now. It put Denton fleetingly in mind of a man changing into his stiff best suit after work. 'Mr Fenton will start the discussion. A missionary near Hankow. A deep thinker, I believe, as well as a tireless missionary. And his topic is of fundamental importance, of course.'
Leaving the Deanery half an hour later, so unlike, in its white, lofty spaciousness, the cosy picture that the word drew in his English mind, Denton wandered aimlessly down the narrow, unpaved alleys towards the Bund. He held his hat in his hand and walked in the shade that the walls threw from the sloping afternoon sun. Rickshaw coolies hailed him importunately, hawkers eyed him appraisingly from their stalls, women labourers heaving heavy stones on their backs staggered past him towards a new building, sweat oozing down their cheeks and straining necks. It was too late for the concert in the park and too early for dinner in the mess. He felt a slow, heavy swell of dejection rolling over him as, reaching the Bund, he watched fashionably-dressed men and women sauntering away from the park gates and climbing into cabs or sedan chairs, to be carried laughing and smiling away into the evening. It was a nameless dejection that had been growing quietly inside him while talking to the Dean, a depression that seemed to crush him silently with its suffocating weight. An old beggar-woman accosted him, mumbling words he couldn't understand and insistently shaking a scratched and dented red tin box in which a few copper cents rattled together. Her wretched little box, symbol of the hopeless, dreary life it represented, seemed suddenly to epitomise his own life too, although he couldn't have said why. He took out a dollar and recklessly dropped it in the box, as if he could buy off his own depression with such extravagant generosity. At once more beggars appeared, women, children, men without arms, blind, deaf, dumb, diseased and deformed, young and old. He stood helplessly, gazing at the seething, beseeching, clinging little crowd, shaking his head against their insistent whining murmur, while the homeward stream of Europeans flowed steadily past him from the park, their eyes stiffly unseeing or ironically amused. He knew that he ought to go back and practise his Chinese or write another letter home. But the image of his silent empty rooms, of the mess where the rest of them would be drinking, playing billiards or vacantly lying back in the cane chairs of the lounge, yawning with boredom, only added another dark weight to his depression. He ploughed impulsively through the softly plucking hands of the beggars and stepped into a waiting rickshaw.
'Where to, master?' the coolie asked, lifting the shafts. He was a young man, not much older than himself, with a wispy moustache that gave him a sardonic, mocking expression.
Denton didn't know. He pointed vaguely along the Bund.
The