Lost Horizon Read Free

people made quite delightful company. Before I’d been there an hour I found that a meal had been prepared and a young Chinese Christian doctor sat down with me to it and kept up a conversation in a jolly mixture of French and English. Afterwards, he and the Mother Superior took me to see the hospital, of which they were very proud. I had told them I was a writer, and they were simple-minded enough to be a-flutter at the thought that I might put them all into a book. We walked past the beds while the doctor explained the cases. The place was spotlessly clean and looked to be very competently run. I had forgotten all about the mysterious patient with the refined English accent till the Mother Superior reminded me that we were just coming to him. All I could see was the back of the man’s head, he was apparently asleep. It was suggested that I should address him in English, so I said ‘Good afternoon,’ which was the first and not very original thing I could think of. The man looked up suddenly and said ‘Good afternoon’ in answer. It was true; his accent was educated. But I hadn’t time to be surprised at that, for I had already recognized him, despite his beard and altogether changed appearance and the fact that we hadn’t met for so long. He was Conway. I was certain he was, and yet, if I’d paused to think about it, I might well have come to the conclusion that he couldn’t possibly be. Fortunately I acted on the impulse of the moment. I called out his name and my own, and though he looked at me without any definite sign of recognition, I was positive I hadn’t made any mistake. There was an odd little twitching of the facial muscles that I had noticed in him before, and he had the same eyes that at Balliol we used to say were so much more of a Cambridge blue than an Oxford. But besides all that, he was a man one simply didn’t make mistakes about—to see him once was to know him always. Of course the doctor and the Mother Superior were greatly excited. I told them that I knew the man, that he was English, and a friend of mine, and that if he didn’t recognize me, it could only be because he had completely lost his memory. They agreed, in a rather amazed way, and we had a long consultation about the case. They weren’t able to make any suggestions as to how Conway could possibly have arrived at Chung-Kiang in his condition.
    “To make the story brief, I stayed there over a fortnight, hoping that somehow or other I might induce him to remember things. I didn’t succeed, but he regained his physical health, and we talked a good deal. When I told him quite frankly who I was and who he was, he was docile enough not to argue about it. He was quite cheerful, even, in a vague sort of way, and seemed glad enough to have my company. To my suggestion that I should take him home, he simply said that he didn’t mind. It was a little unnerving, that apparent lack of any personal desire. As soon as I could I arranged for our departure. I made a confidant of an acquaintance in the consular office at Hankow, and thus the necessary passport and so on were made out without the fuss there might otherwise have been. Indeed, it seemed to me that for Conway’s sake the whole business had better be kept free from publicity and newspaper headlines, and I’m glad to say I succeeded in that. It could have been jam, of course, for the press.
    “Well, we made our exit from China in quite a normal way. We sailed down the Yang-tse to Nanking and then took a train for Shanghai. There was a Jap liner leaving for ’Frisco that same night, so we made a great rush and got on board.”
    “You did a tremendous lot for him,” I said.
    Rutherford did not deny it. “I don’t think I should have done quite as much for any one else,” he answered. “But there was something about the fellow, and always had been—it’s hard to explain, but it made one enjoy doing what one could.”
    “Yes,” I agreed. “He had a peculiar charm, a sort