‘There is no place in this world for us, you know that. We are judged and found unacceptable.’ I struggled to find the words, wanting desperately to help her understand that I was doing what I was compelled to do. ‘You cannot think that I wish to give you up. You must know how much I care for you. In what deep affection I hold you.’
‘Affection? You are too kind!’
She picked up her straw bonnet and pulled it onto her head but her hands were trembling so much she was not able to tie the ribbon beneath her chin. I leaned forwards and did it for her.
‘One day you will see that I am only doing what I must. That what life’s circumstances compel me to do does not reflect the measure of my feelings for you.’ I curled the scarlet ribbon around my fingers and eased it gently into a bow. ‘If there were another way, do you not think I would take it? And who is to say that, in the future, things will not alter again, but this time in our favour?’
‘You know they will not. Why say they will?’
I tried to ignore the tears filling her eyes. The blue of them was more than a match for the iridescent wing of the kingfisher. How I wished she was no bigger than that jewel-bright bird so that I might tuck her in my pocket and keep her with me always! What part of God’s plan for me did her suffering serve? Was it His way of showing me that I had transgressed? Was the pain I had to witness in her darling face my own punishment?
‘No miles would separate me from you if I believed you wanted me,’ Rose told me. ‘But you have already placed yourself forever beyond my reach.’
I paused, unable to think of a reply that would not cause her deeper distress. ‘Needs must…’
‘…when the devil drives? Not God this time, Kate?’ she asked. And then she turned and walked away from me.
‘But Kate,’ Jessy’s voice had a childlike whine to it, ‘you cannot mean to stay here beyond the summer, surely?’
‘I cannot leave before I have sufficient funds for my mission, Jessy, you are aware of that.’
‘And you must be aware that I have no more money to give. All that I have left is what I may get for my few pieces of furniture, and I cannot dispose of those while you and your mother are still living in the house.’
‘Well, I am relieved to hear you do not expect Mama to sleep on the bare boards of the floor!’
‘Why must you say things like that? All I ever wanted was for us to go about our work together.’
‘Which is my dearest wish also, Jessy, but you must face facts. It is no good wishing things were other than they are. You had promised to see that we should both, you and I, be able to set out upon our plans for assisting the lepers together, but clearly, as you have not funds enough for this to happen, we must amend those plans.’
‘I have not money enough because it has all been spent!’
‘I really do wish you wouldn’t allow yourself to get in such a state about this. I fail to see why you should be anxious about your future when you have already secured a post in an Indian hospital. It must be a comfort to know you will have an income, and that you will be setting foot in the very place I had hoped we would be travelling to together.’
Jessy closed her eyes briefly and then replied. ‘I had no choice but to seek a position. You know my family have connections in the north of the country, and that is how I was able to find a promise of employment. I would far rather we went together. It was you decided against, I might remind you.’
‘How could I, in all conscience, go anywhere before seeing Mama settled back in London? It is all very well for a person such as yourself, without responsibilities, to go where she pleases. I do not have that freedom.’
‘I do not believe you have ever done other than as you please!’
She had become quite shrill, and set to weeping in the most dramatic manner. I gave her my pocket-handkerchief.
‘Dearest Jessy, do not take on so. It is my earnest intention to follow on to India as soon as I am able. All will be well, you’ll see. I shall remain here only until I can book passage for myself and my mother, and obtained the necessary funds to allow me to continue on after that.’
‘Well I should like to know where you imagine finding those funds without me there to provide them,’ she sniffed in the most unattractive fashion.
‘I am fortunate in having secured the patronage of Mrs Hewitt.’
‘Oh! Mrs Hewitt…’
‘She shares our vision, Jessy. Your own heart’s desire is hers too.’
‘That,’ she said, taking a steadying breath and squaring her shoulders, ‘I do not for one second doubt.’
I saw that she was calmer at last and patted her hand. ‘You will be the pioneer in our mission, Jessy, think of that,’ I told her. ‘I shall sell up your pieces for you and I will bring the proceeds with me all the way to India so that I might put them in your dear, sweet hand. And then we shall work together as we have always hoped to do. And you will be happy again then, won’t you?’
You never forgot her, did you? It was to her that your thoughts turned when you were in St Petersburg.
Of course I did not forget her. She was dear to me. As you were.
You did not write to me.
I could not.
You left her, just as you left me, and yet you continued to write to her.
I did.
To try to win her back.
She would not forgive me.
She tried to ruin you!
She was angry with me, for leaving her. I tried to make her understand. After all, she had always known my mission was to travel to wherever I was needed. She had always known my life’s work would take me away. But not forever.
She didn’t see it that way, did she?
Perhaps if I had been able to see her again, to talk to her in person, to hold her hand.
Instead you wrote letters, and she used them against you, didn’t she?
She felt that I had chosen my lepers over her. Which was in some ways true. But she should not have asked me to give them up. How could I? How could I turn from God’s purpose for me? She should not have asked me that.
You didn’t give her up as easily as you walked away from me.
Oh, Rose, you know that was not easy at all.
I know what you said to her in those letters. Everybody knows because she let them put them in the paper. Your love letters to her, and she made them public, for all to see, for all to leer over.
She acted out of anger, out of hurt.
I read those newspapers. The whole world did. Everybody knew your secret then, but still you denied it.
I had to protect my reputation, you must see that. If I was ruined no one would donate money to the cause. The hospital would never have been built. I had to bring a suit against the paper. I had to silence their libellous reports.
But they weren’t libellous, were they? They were true. I remember what you wrote. I read it and read it and read it and wished that it was my name at the top! Wished it was me you still longed for! My own dear Nell you wrote. You talked about your appointments with the great and the good of Russian society who were to fund your trip. You said The Ambassador cannot arrange for my official presentation until Monday next. I am, however, sure of getting at least £100 for my lepers from the Emperor and Empress, and I will give you £50 out of it to spend as you please. How quick you were to spread the financial good fortune of the lepers among your friends! You might have sent me a little while you were about it.
You must understand, Nell had spent so much of her own money supporting my mission. Without her I would never have been in St Petersburg.
You gave funds raised in the name of God and for the lepers of Siberia to your fancy woman!
I sought only to repay some of what she had spent. She had given enough.
Or did you seek to buy back her affection? I have the entire letter committed to memory, for it played so much on my mind I had to consider your words over and over. The money was not the worst of it, was it? Not for those pious ladies
and gents you hoped to win over to your cause. Not for me. Remember how you wrote Be sure, my darling one, to wait at Berlin till I come. I will take you up the Rhine and to Paris, where we will have a nice time; then on to England in the lovely spring. Live without you I simply cannot. There is no work or pleasure of any kind in life without you. I love you with my whole soul. How she must have enjoyed hearing you speak so.
I felt badly that she was so unhappy.
You did not end there. You went so far as to plan your pretty future together. Don’t you remember? You were to return to New Zealand to be with her. I will accept your offer, dear Nell, you wrote, to live with you there, because exist without you I cannot. Oh! my love, they do not know what love is. My love may be fiercer than yours, but time will mend that.
But time did not mend that. She would not be moved, my silly, stubborn Nell. She would not.
I closed the door as the last of the furniture was taken away. We had obtained a fair price for it, and I felt confident Jessy would be pleased. It had suited her to leave the disposal of her tables and chairs and so on to me, and I had been glad to do it. After all, Mama and I had lived rent free in her little house for quite some time, and had been happy to act as caretakers for it after Jessy had departed for India. It can be a worry placing such a thing in the hands of agents, and she had been so set on leaving when she did.
I was never entirely clear in my mind as to why she was so determined to go then. I had told her as often as I had patience for that if she were to wait we could all travel to Europe together. She had insisted that she had not the money to stay longer in New Zealand, and that she needed to take up the post she had secured as a nurse in India as soon as possible. This surprised me at the time, as I had thought we were making plans together. For weeks we had talked of little else but when we should go to India and how we should get there. Increasingly, she had concerned herself with the finer details of how our trip was to be funded, to the extent where I had eventually had to reassure her that if her own resources were running low, at least Nell would be able to step in and pay where she could not. This idea had not, it must be said, found favour with Jessy. Indeed, she had become so resentful of the time I spent with Nell that she avoided any activities or arrangements that involved the three of us being together at one time. As a consequence she and I saw less and less of each other. In truth, by the time she left, I felt we had grown quite distant. She had a pinched look about her that was not flattering, and I am certain it was a direct result of so much fretting about money, which never, in my experience, did anyone any good at all.
The items of jewellery which she had left in my care were harder to sell than the furniture had been. There was a rather charming gold pin in the form of a jewelled snake, as well as a ring and a string of pearls, and one or two other baubles. They were a little dated, but attractive in their own way, and in good condition, particularly the snake. I had sought the advice of a valuer at the jewellers in Nelson, but he had offered me such a low price I had opted to hold on to the pieces for a little longer. I reasoned that they might command a higher value in London. From there I could more easily see to it that the proceeds caught up with Jessy, assuming that by then she would be settled at her new post on the sub-continent.
The Polytechnic Institute in London was one of the first places in which I was able to give my talk regarding the lepers in Siberia and my plans for the hospital there. It was a grand building, though with a utilitarian air about it. It was raining when I stepped out of the cab that had been sent to collect me from my hotel, but even so there was a sizeable crowd awaiting my arrival. Once inside I was taken up onto the stage and introduced, though I heard barely a word of what was said, such was my astonishment at seeing the auditorium completely filled. I steadied my nerves by thinking of those who now relied upon my success, and by asking God to give me a sound and commanding voice so that my message might be heard.
I recall that as I stepped forward to speak I experienced a piercing pang of regret that Nell was not there to share the moment. We had talked for so long about our plans, had travelled across continents and oceans together, and her support had been invaluable to me. And yet, she had gone from my life completely. My letters to her, heartfelt and sincere as they were, went unanswered. I did not, at that point, know the full extent of her fury toward me, nor what form it would take. I could never have imagined the harm she wished upon me put into such effective action. I believe still that she was cajoled into it by someone who desired nothing short of my ruin and would press all and everyone into service in order to bring it about.
An expectant hush descended upon the London audience. I took a deep breath, thanked them for sallying forth on such a rain-filled evening, and set before them the facts of my journey, of the plight of the lepers, and of my dream of building a hospital. I talked for nearly an hour of a land most people present that night would never see; of a disease of which they had no experience save horror stories; and of a people who must have seemed as remote and alien to them as if they had been located on the moon. And yet, those good and ordinary people, they listened to my words, they heard my plea, and they revealed themselves to be true Christians! As I completed my speech they began enthusiastic applause, many rising to their feet to show their support. The sound of their approval rang throughout the hall, confirmation, had I needed it, that my work was worthwhile, and that it would be recognised as such. My host, Mrs Dunstead-Blythe, was forced to ask for quiet in the end, so that she could explain the procedure in place for those wishing to give donations. Such a great number wished to give money that a queue formed that wound its way twice around the auditorium, and it was an hour more before all funds had been taken in and I had shaken the hand of the last donor.
The SS Ruapehu was a fine ship, though not grand. Mama and I had taken the best grade of cabin funds would allow, but even so she protested at the meanness of its proportions.
‘Really, Kate, we are to be cooped up like hens for weeks. Could not better have been found?’
‘Mama we must make our resources last. You know my payments from the hospital ceased some time ago. We have only the small income from my insurance policies.’
‘After all your hard work at the Wellington…’ she puffed out her chest as she sat on the edge of one of the twin beds. ‘Such little gratitude. And your arduous endeavours on behalf of the St John’s Ambulance. Why did not they see fit to repay your service?’
‘I gave of my time voluntarily, Mama, and the work was far from arduous. And really, this cabin is perfectly adequate for our needs. After all, it is a large enough ship. You and I will be enjoying its dining room and the decks. Why, we shall hardly be in here at all.’
‘It will be my place of quiet solitude when you are busy with your friend, no doubt.’ My mother’s earlier acceptance of Nell had, to my dismay, evaporated as our friendship strengthened. Once again there was the familiar barb in her voice when she spoke of Nell. It had been the same with Rose. Only Jessy had escaped her disapproval.
‘You know Nell has been generous in support of my cause. She is my greatest advocate. Without her my plans for taking aid to the lepers would come to nothing.’
‘A fact she is not above holding over you when it suits her to do so.’
‘You judge her harshly, Mama, and without cause. She is a true friend.’
‘Friend,’ my mother repeated, though she made the word sound unpleasant.
‘I am surely not to be denied a friendship, Mama?’
‘Oh, it is not for me to deny you anything, Kate, and I am certain you will not deny yourself! Now, I should imagine you will want to find the good Mrs Hewitt and see that she is content with her own quarters. I will set myself to unpacking, though heaven knows where I shall find to put everything.’
I left her then, happy to take the opportunity to go. We would be at sea for six weeks, and already that was beginning to seem an eternity. But Nell was with us. And Mama needed her naps. I would not be ca
lled upon to be her companion without respite. And in those times Nell and I could please ourselves.
I met Nell in the passageway.
‘We are berthed on the same deck,’ she told me, ‘and close by. I am but two doors removed.’ She pointed back the way she had come. ‘Your mother is settled?’
‘As well as she ever will be.’ I linked my arm through hers. ‘Come, let us see the last of New Zealand before it is too distant to make out.’
On deck there was a refreshing breeze. Other passengers milled about excitedly, some also taking their farewells of the land we left behind. Nell and I stood watching the stretch of water between us and home grow broader.
‘Shall we ever return?’ she asked suddenly, and I saw that she was sad.
‘Don’t be glum, Nell. Of course we shall, if it is what you wish us to do.’
‘But there are so many other demands upon you, Kate. We are only at the start of your mission.’
‘For which I have you to thank.’ I squeezed her arm a little tighter. ‘I cannot tell you how much it pleases me that we are setting out on this adventure together. We must see Mama to London, and then we go to Paris. Imagine what a time we shall have!’
‘You will be taken up with your fundraising.’
‘And you will be ever at my side.’ I smiled at her. ‘Nell, you must never see my affection for you as in opposition to my calling. The two are the mainstays of my life. I could not do without either. You must know that.’
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