The Skeptical Romancer by W. Somerset Maugham Page A

year?”
    “I have some business that I couldn’t leave any longer,” answered the missionary, “and then I wanted to get the mail.”
    “There was a stranger here the other day asking for you,” said the doctor.
    “For me?” cried the other, with surprise.
    “Well, not for you particularly,” explained the doctor. “He wanted to know the way to the American Mission. I told him; but I said he wouldn’t find anyone there. He seemed rather surprised at that, so I told him that you all went up to the hills in May and didn’t come back till September.”
    “A foreigner?” asked the missionary, still wondering who the stranger could be.
    “Oh, yes, certainly.” The doctor’s eyes twinkled. “Then he asked me about the other missions; I told him the London Mission had a settlement here, but it wasn’t the least use going there as all the missionaries were away in the hills. After all, it’s devilish hot in the city. ‘Then I’d like to go to one of the mission schools,’ said the stranger. ‘Oh, they’re all closed,’ I said. ‘Well, then, I’ll go to the hospital.’ ‘That’s well worth a visit,’ I said, ‘the American hospital is equipped with all the latest contrivances. Their operating theatre is perfect.’ ‘What is the name of the doctor in charge?’ ‘Oh, he’s up in the hills.’ ‘But what about the sick?’ ‘There are no sick between May and September,’ I said, ‘and if there are they have to put up with the native dispensers.’ ”
    Dr. Saunders paused for a moment. The missionary looked ever so slightly vexed.
    “Well?” he said.
    “The stranger looked at me irresolutely for a moment or two. ‘I wanted to see something of the missions before I left,’ he said. ‘You might try the Roman Catholics,’ I said, ‘they’re here all the year round.’ ‘When do they take their holidays, then?’ he asked. ‘They don’t,’ I said. He left me at that. I think he went to the Spanish convent.”
    The missionary fell into the trap and it irritated him to think how ingenuously he had done so. He ought to have seen what was coming.
    “Who was this, anyway?” he asked innocently.
    “I asked him his name,” said the doctor. “ ‘Oh, I’m Christ,’ he said.”
    The missionary shrugged his shoulders and abruptly told his rickshaw boy to go on.
    It had put him thoroughly out of temper. It was so unjust. Of course they went away from May to September. The heat made any useful activity quite out of the question, and it had been found by experience that the missionaries preserved their health and strength much better if they spent the hot months in the hills. A sick missionary was only an encumbrance. It was a matter of practical politics, and it had been found that the Lord’s work was done more efficiently if a certain part of the year was set aside for rest and recreation. And then the reference to the Roman Catholics was grossly unfair. They were unmarried. They had no families to think of. The mortality among them was terrifying. Why, in that very city, of fourteen nuns who had come out to China ten years ago, all but three were dead. It was perfectly easy for them, because it was more convenient for their work to live in the middle of the city and to stay there all the year round. They had no ties. They had no duties to those who were near and dear to them. Oh, it was grossly unjust to drag in the Roman Catholics.
    But suddenly an idea flashed through his mind. What rankled most was that he had left the rascally doctor (you only had to look at his face all puckered with malicious amusement to know he was a rogue) without a word. There certainly was an answer, but he had not had the presence of mind to make it; and now the perfect repartee occurred to him. A glow of satisfaction filled him and he almost fancied that he had made it. It was a crushing rejoinder, and he rubbed his very long thin hands with satisfaction. “My dear Sir,” he ought to have said, “Our