The Pagan Madonna

It was chance that brought Jane Norman into Shanghai. The British

transport, bound from Vladivostok to Hong-Kong, was destined to swing on

her mudhook forty-eight hours. So Jane, a Red Cross nurse, relieved and on

the first leg of the journey home to the United States, decided to spend

those forty-eight hours in Shanghai, see the sights and do a little

shopping. Besides, she had seen nothing of China. On the way over,

fourteen months since, she had come direct from San Francisco to the

Russian port.

Jane was one of those suffocating adventurers whom circumstance had fenced

in. In fancy she beat her hands against the bars of this cage that had no

door, but through which she could see the caravans of dreams. Sea room and

sky room were the want of her, and no matter which way she turned--bars.

Her soul craved colour, distances, mountain peaks; and about all she had

ever seen were the white walls of hospital wards. It is not adventure to

tend the sick, to bind up wounds, to cheer the convalescing; it is a dull

if angelic business.

In her heart of hearts Jane knew that she had accepted the hardships of

the Siberian campaign with the secret hope that some adventure might

befall her--only to learn that her inexorable cage had travelled along

with her. Understand, this longing was not the outcome of romantical

reading; it was in the marrow of her--inherent. She was not in search of

Prince Charming. She rarely thought of love as other young women think of

it. She had not written in her mind any particular event she wanted to

happen; but she knew that there must be colour, distance, mountain peaks.

A few days of tremendous excitement; and then she acknowledged that she

would be quite ready to return to the old monotonous orbit.

The Great War to Jane had not been romance and adventure; her imagination,

lively enough in other directions, had not falsely coloured the stupendous

crime. She had accepted it instantly for what it was--pain, horror, death,

hunger, and pestilence. She saw it as the genius of Vasili Vereshchagin

and Émile Zola had seen it.

The pioneer--after all, what was it he was truly seeking? Freedom! And as

soon as ever civilization caught up with him he moved on. Without

understanding it, that was really all Jane wanted--freedom. Freedom from

genteel poverty, freedom from the white walls of hospitals, freedom from

exactly measured hours. Twenty four hours a day, all her own; that was

what she wanted; twenty-four hours a day to do with as she pleased--to

sleep in, play, laugh, sing, love in. Pioneers, explorers,

adventurers--what else do they seek? Twenty-four hours a day, all their

own!