"You might have known, if you hadn't been in a dream," muttered Mervyn Pugh as he sat, his face hidden in his hands. "Nothing can be done without money, nothing, and it wouldn't have mattered if it had not been for this cursed meeting--and--and the rector----"
"Don't curse him, Merve," broke in Morris Pugh, who stood, with the look of one newly awakened, near the window, gazing out vaguely at a rising star, which lay on the distant hilltop like a visitant from heaven. Even as he looked, his mind all confused and blurred, the novel thought came to him that with such high and holy messengers at His command, the Creator need not have condescended to send such farthing dips of wandering lights to mark His elect, as some which had been manifested during the revival.
For a month had passed since Gwen's singing of the hymn had electrified the little congregation at Dinas, a month during which----
What had happened?
Morris Pugh, looking at his brother, saw that past month as in a dream, indeed. He, as the preacher, forgetful of everything save his mission, and those four voices, Gwen's soprano, Alicia Edwards's contralto, Mervyn's tenor, and Hwfa Morgan's bass, blending into every message of penitence or peace which emotion could desire. So they had gone preaching and singing, rousing an almost frenzied response wherever they went. And all the while----
"I don't understand yet," he said slowly. "Why was all this money required?"
Mervyn echoed the "all" with half-pathetic scorn. "A hundred pounds doesn't go far in running a revival," he said savagely. "One must start the thing. Why, even before we left Dinas, Gwen and Alicia had to get their clothes, they couldn't go in what they had got, and there was music wanted. One had to get a chorus, and the men couldn't sit up all night and work all day. Morgan and I talked it all over, for some one must look after practical things, you know, and I said I would finance it till the subscriptions came in. It's no use your looking like that, Morris. Any fool would tell you money had to be got somehow for the time, and it would have been all right but for this row with the rector. That isn't my fault."
Morris Pugh started as if he had been stung. "No! it was mine," he said. "I am the elder. I ought to have considered."
Mervyn rose quickly, and, going over to his brother, laid a caressing hand on his shoulder.
"Now don't, Morris," he said, using a common Welsh endearment, "let us forget ourselves for a while. I suppose it was wrong, but--" here his lip quivered, "it musn't injure the work. My God! how awful that would be." He flung himself on the chair again and, stretching his arms out over the table, positively sobbed. He was a prey to every emotion, every feeling that in this moment of anxiety and bewilderment swept over him, for he and his brother had come home but half an hour ago full of elation from a successful meeting at the other end of the county, to find that the rector, ousted member of village boards and councils, had insisted on a scrutiny of the accounts ere making over office next day.
And Mervyn knew that the balance would be a hundred pounds short; the hundred pounds which had been paid over by the central fund for educational purposes, and which should have been deposited in the Post Office Bank when it had come in a month ago. He had not done so, however, because, on emergency, he had borrowed the loan of the use of it for something else.
To do him justice that was all he had meant. Once the revival was fairly started the monetary question could be allowed to crop up, but without money in the background to make it possible to pose as having no regard to money, how could the very committees which would work the business properly be called into existence? At the time he had thought of nothing but God's service, and even now he felt little remorse. His sense of conversion was too strong, and the whole month of incessant irritation of every possible religious emotion had left him a pulp so far as actual facts were concerned ... and as a rule the village accounts went on and on endlessly ...
He lifted up his hand and smote the table impotently. Great heavens! what was to be done? That hundred pounds must be replaced somehow.
As he thought of how it had been spent, he felt vaguely uncomfortable over an item which had gone to pay a small bill of his own, contracted in amusing Myfanwy Jones at Blackborough. He felt ashamed of that, but he had no shame for other things in the further past. A curious fanatical exultation filled him as he thought how marvellous were God's ways, and how men and women, sinners utterly, might stand in all innocence together and proclaim infinite mercy. Inscrutable mystery! Almost incredible secret tie of forgiven sin, which made the voices thrill and blend.
And this must end unless there was money. They had but a few hours, and even Hwfa Morgan was not there to help with advice. He would not return till morning, so there was only poor, dreamy Morris, absorbed in the personal issues.
There was but one issue! That there should be no setback to the overwhelming success of the revival.
For it had been successful beyond measure, in works as well as words.
In Dinas itself, the cotoneaster-covered inn might have put up its shutters for all the liquor sold at the once-frequented bar. There was no swearing or quarrelling from one end of the parish to the other. Even the snaring of their neighbours' rabbits for Sunday dinner, ultimate crime of a Welsh quarryman, had ceased. And these were but the outward and visible signs of a great inward and spiritual grace. A sense of perfect personal peace had fallen upon the mass of men.
There were no more anxieties, no more fears. Heaven and its golden harps were within the reach of all, and, looking forward, each personality could see itself surviving death and going on unchanged for ever and ever and aye. So the Grave had lost its Victory. Each trivial soul was safe.
The result in pure morality, not only in Dinas but throughout the whole countryside, was unquestionable. Even those who disapproved of such emotional excitement, or who, like the rector, viewed with disfavour all outpourings of grace except through the appointed channels, could not deny this, and were driven to darkling hints as to the staying power of such religious feeling.
Only Martha, going down in state to order the usual gross of matches at the village shop--the carriage arrangements precluded their purchase with all other things at the Stores--fell foul of the whole business, lock and stock and barrel, to Isaac Edwards, whom she found singing hymns while he did up the pound package of sugar, in which the paper, heavy blue, was included in the weight. Not that it was his fault that this was so. It was only one of the usual tricks of a trade which on a small scale cannot possibly be run straight.
"You'll excuse me," she said with a sniff, "but it strikes me as you're all a deal too free with the Almighty. But there, once folk stops making their reverences to the gentry, 'tain't long ere they get to noddin' at their Creator. An' you don't go to the Bible for your crowded-up night-watches, Mr. Edwards. King David, an' he oughter know, says mornin', evenin', an' noon. At night 'e watered 'is bed with 'is tears an' was still, like a decent gentleman. There wasn't none of this not-comin'-home--till--mornin' business, and how folks as 'as to work hard for their livin' does it, beats me. I'll set up agin most, but I'm a pore piece next day, an' wouldn't ask a full wage of anybody, not I! And as for the young folk; you mark my words, Mr. Edwards! Gels is gels, an' boys is boys, whether they stands in a kirk or a mill, as the sayin' is. An' they'll find it out for theirselves, poor sillies, by an' by, if them as is past 'youth's hayday' don't harvest-home 'em before lights out. So there! An' you can send up a gross an' a half o' matches if you think that not bein' o' your way o' believin' I shall 'ave to 'arden myself to brimstone."
So she had departed; but her warnings had been as chaff before the wind while the harvest was being gathered in.
The flood-tide of popular opinion lifted even the wildest extravagances as well as the most sober actuality and carried them with it. Whither remained to be seen.
And now?
Morris Pugh, standing at the window looking in dull amaze at the star which had by this time dissociated itself entirely from earth, could not think what would happen now.
Everything on which he had any grip seemed to have gone. Since that day, a long month ago, when his voice had failed before Gwen's voice, he had, like the star, dissociated himself from the material world altogether. He had given the rein to his emotions, he had lived in the clouds, never asking or thinking how Alicia and Gwen came to be dressed so becomingly, never inquiring how the expenses of railway tickets, hiring, placarding, advertisements, notices in the papers, all the thousand and one absolute necessities for a successful meeting, were defrayed. So the truth came upon him with deadly force. Morally a far stronger man than his brother, he could not for the moment get beyond the actual fact of fraud.
How could Mervyn have taken the money? How could he?
"Well!" said the latter at last, rising to pace the room impatiently, nervously. "Can't you suggest something? The money must be replaced somehow. We daren't risk anything. What can be done? and in the next few hours.--Oh! it is maddening to think how many would be willing to lend it if we had only time! To think even of the thousands who have hundreds and hundreds of pounds to fling away on a fancy, and this----" he paused, arrested by his brother's face. "What is it, Morris? what--what makes you look like that?"
For answer Morris sank to his knees and covered his face as if in prayer. "I thank Thee, O my God!" he murmured, "this hast Thou prepared aforetime. O ye of little faith--of little faith!"
"What is it, Morris?" repeated Mervyn curiously. The last month had done its work on him also. He was prepared for all things, all signs, and wonders. "You might tell me," he added, after a pause.
"No!"
Morris's face came up from his hands full of triumphant, transcendental exultation. "No! That is a secret between me and my God. But the hundred pounds is found! It is found, I tell you! Oh! marvellous, most marvellous! Truly He moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!"
For Mervyn's words had recalled to him in a flash the half-forgotten memory of Ned Blackborough's hidden money, and his mind attuned to miracles, super-sensitised to the direct dealings of Providence with man, leapt to the conclusion that the hundred pounds, so idly, so carelessly flung away on what appeared a mere fancy, was in truth a heavenly provision against this urgent need.
The thought explained so much. The devil of greed within him, which had urged him to take the money for his own use--the gradual unfolding, through this temptation, of the desire for some outpouring of the Spirit. Here were more marvels than he had time at present to consider. The great fact was sufficient, that in the wilderness the table had been spread.
"It was wrong to take the money, Merve," he said, his face suffused with a heavenly joy; "we must not forget that--we must weep and pray over that; but it was for His service, and He has forgiven us--the money is found!"
"But when--that is the point," began Mervyn anxiously; "it must be by to-morrow morning, and it is late----"
"You will wake to find it on the Bible by your bedside, my brother," interrupted Morris solemnly, "and then we will give thanks unto the Lord, for He hath done marvellous things. Come to supper now; our mother will be anxious at our delay. Leave the rest in His hands."
The moon was riding high amid the stars when Morris Pugh, closing the door of the sleeping cottage behind him with a whispered benediction on its inmates, started for his climb to the gap where Ned Blackborough had hidden the hundred pounds. The night air struck chill, for it was late October, but he was in far too exalted a frame of mind to consider such earthly things as overcoats or comforters. His exaltation, indeed, would have seemed incredible even to the self of six weeks ago; for, despite his enthusiasm, he had been hard-headed and practical enough. Now, enervated by constant use of his emotions, it seemed to him--full to the brim as he was by right of his Cymric birth with imaginative fire, poetry passion--that he was going up into the mountain alone to meet his Lord and receive a gift from His hands.
He felt as Moses must have felt on Pisgah, as St. Jerome felt when the last Sacrament was vouchsafed to him. Those last few weeks had made an ecstatic out of the enthusiast. He saw nothing but his Lord, he heard nothing but the call to come.
Marvellous! Most marvellous!
Yes! of a truth! for about him--to him unseen--lay the great marvel of the Real Presence in the world, above him the marvel of the Real Presence in the skies and stars. But the stones were to his eager feet but stumbling-blocks, the glory of the starlight and the moonlight was but the halo of a concrete heaven.
Still it was very rapture; worth in itself a thousand times the petty hundred pounds which had called it into being. Put into bald English, here was a man going to take money which he wot of, in order to save his brother from disgrace. Translated into the terms of emotional religion, here was a sinner about to find salvation.
The night was very clear, very cold. The stars sparkled brilliantly, aloofly. There was a suspicion of frost-crackle in the thick covering of dew which lay like a filmy gossamer quilt over the grassy uplands. The startled sheep left a darker track of dew-despoiled herbage behind their flying footsteps. There was no cloud upon the sky whose velvet darkness seemed devoid of light save for the unhaloed moon and the sharp shining stars.
But Morris Pugh saw none of these things. He had found what he sought--what all Religions seek--the Self that is not yourself. He had found it through an abstraction of the mind, not through the manifold face of matter. But the sense of finality, of universal Oneness, comes in a thousand ways, and he felt it fully. He could have sung in the gladness of his heart, even while his stumbling feet bruised themselves over the unheeded stones.
The little rush-fringed pool, by which he had sat with the others asserting that money was the root of all evil, lay so still, so shining, so set, that it also might have been frost-bound--like the heart of man before the Mercy of the Most High had touched it.
The root of all evil!
Morris smiled. He knew better now. There was nothing evil in the Holiest of Holies. Money was a great gift.
So, as if before an altar, every atom of him, soul and body, thrilling with high expectation, he knelt before the cleft in the rock to receive what had been given. His very hands trembled.
"Not unto us, Lord, but unto Thy name," he murmured softly.
Then came a pause. His fingers, feeling the cleft, found it empty.
Empty! Incredible! Impossible! A great amaze took him. He stood up and stared vacantly at the receding whiteness of the dew-covered, moonlit steeps.
Empty!
Then what became of----
Of everything!
He had been so buoyed up by certainty. He had been so sure of himself and of his God. He sat down on the frost-wet grass after a time and tried to think; but his mind was in a maze. He followed one path of thought after another, always to be brought up by that barrier of feeling that he had been fooled; or he had fooled himself. Had it not been for his previous exaltation, his exultation, he might by degrees have accepted the situation and considered which of the three other participants in the secret had been beforehand with him. But there was no question of being beforehand with him. If what he had felt--nay! had known--was true, they had been beforehand with God.
How long he sat, he did not know. It came upon him by surprise to hear the voice of a shepherd calling to his dogs. He looked round, and lo! it was long past dawn. He must go back and tell Mervyn that he had made a mistake; or was it Someone else who had been tricked?
When he arrived at the village the first early hour had passed, and folk were already beginning the day's work. Ah! what would Mervyn say, and what would he do?
It was terrible to try the latch of the cottage, find it open, and know that his brother must be waiting for him; waiting so anxiously. But there was a respite. Mervyn was not in. Hwfa Morgan had arrived early, the woman who tended the house said, and they had gone out together just as she came in to light the fire.
Morris sat down beside it vaguely relieved. Hwfa Morgan might think of something. Meanwhile the warmth of the fire was comforting. He must have been very chill. His blood seemed to rush and bound through him like a melting river.
He was startled from a half-doze by Mervyn's entrance, and he stood up unsteadily.
"I am sorry, brother," he began, "but I--I mean some one has failed----"
Mervyn interrupted him curtly. "It's lucky I didn't trust to you--but it is all right--the thing's settled. Hwfa Morgan turned up this morning, and as you hadn't come back we talked it over, and he suggested taking Edwards into our confidence. So we went over to him, and he saw it would be as dangerous to his interests as to ours if there was any fuss, so he consented to take our security--yours, too, of course--that he shouldn't be a loser, and gave me a voucher of deposit all right. It can only be a question of a fortnight or so, for once a Central Committee takes over the revival regularly our expenses will be paid----"
"But the voucher?" began Morris.
Mervyn interrupted him impatiently, his naturally high colour heightening itself considerably.
"Oh! yes! of course. He--he antedated it. Luckily there had been no other deposits for three weeks, so the numbers on the counterfoils worked all right. And it doesn't really matter to any one, does it?"
He spoke a trifle defiantly.
"No," replied his brother, with an odd sound between a sob and a laugh. "I don't suppose it matters to--to any one. I--I think I'll go to bed, Merve--I must have got a chill on the mountains--I--I don't feel well."
"But there is the meeting," expostulated Mervyn; "it won't go without you."
Morris shook his head. "I should be no use, Mervyn--I--I can't even think." And then, strong man as he was, he broke down into sobbing.
A whirling spin and din of machinery filled the air. All around was endless revolution, above was the ceaseless, curiously slow progression of the driving bands, those heavy-footed transmitters of elusive incomprehensible force, and below, under the great iron framings which held half a million machines in position, were men and women, grime-covered, fluff-covered, dust-covered, according to their trade, all moving about like automata with dead-alive hearts and hands, attending on some marvellous adaptation of mechanical power devised by those sane human hearts and hands out of their own powers. Pulley and lever, and inclined plane, with all their endless derivatives, were hard at work, for Blackborough was the biggest manufacturing centre in the kingdom, and Blackborough was in the middle of its day's work.
And then, suddenly, a clock struck. Another given moment of eternity had passed, the wheels stopped, the throbbing air grew still. Then from a thousand wide gateways humanity began to stream forth to flood the streets. The stream was thinner, less continuous than usual, for it was Saturday; therefore pay-day, and tallies had to be made up at the cashier's desk.
So they came out by twos and threes, counting their gold and silver. For half Blackborough, the past six days had resolved themselves into pounds, shillings, and pence.
"Shewon't be 'ere likely, o' Monday," sniggered one of two girls, their hair already in curling-pins against the evening's outing, as they passed a weary-looking woman whose thin shawl failed to conceal her figure, and whose heavy foot dragged over the greasy pavement. "Wot ever did she go and get married for, an' to sech a drunken fellar too. She was a good-lookin' gel and 'ad a good time four year back."
"Oh! She'll be at it agin in a month's time none the worse," giggled the other girl pertly. "She lost 'er two fust, an' this 'un 'ull go too, you'll see. Just as well, and they comin' so rapid. My! They is fair beasts, they husbands; but I'd see mine futher fust, I would!"
And then, as they hurried home to dress, they fell to discussing the new hats which were "to do the real trick with their boys" on Sunday, when a long cycle ride was to end in a midnight train, a late supper, and after that bed--if there was time!
Even in their mill garb, they helped to swell the general tendency to lark and titter in the streets; but in truth those same streets were a somewhat curious sight on Saturday afternoons, when, with money in its pocket, humanity was, at last, at leisure to be human; to loiter, to laugh, and to make love. For the upper crust of Blackborough society--the old red-sandstone section labelled "Court" in the social stratification of the postal directory--made a point of rural week-ends, so leaving the human pie free from any covering of culture.
It was amusing to watch. Advocates of realism would have found pictures and to spare amid the overdressed girls whose week's wage had been squandered on their finery, in the undersized boys prematurely given to ogle who had spent theirs on football, bets, and cheap cigarettes.
And as the daylight died down the squalor of it all showed still more clearly beneath the flaring gas-jets. Especially in the market streets where all the week's refuse of the great city was exposed for sale, warranted sound, while buyer and seller alike winked over the warranty!
Purple heaps of fly--blown meat labelled "prime cuts" in the butcher-shops, battered tomatoes on the barrows with "best home-grown" flaunting in green and gold lettering above them; "genuine" butter, "fresh" eggs, and "selected dairy-fed pork," jostling each other in a booth.
Such is the market which centuries of civilisation have provided for the poor.
And the endless crowd passed and repassed, with money in its pocket, lingering in groups about the gin shines at the corners, giggling, cursing, gossiping, quarrelling; each person treading on the heels of the next, and leaving no human footfall on the oozy pavement; only blisters and scars, only the certainty that some living thing had walked through the mire and carried some of the dirt away with it.
"Fine turbit! fine fresh Grimsby turbit!" shouted a man with a barrow. As he turned down a darker by-street, a phosphorescent glimmer shone from his pile of stale plaice as a testimony to eternal truth!
Peter Ramsay, house surgeon to St. Peter's Hospital round the corner, making his way thither on his bicycle, followed on the glimmer, vaguely interested as to whether that semi-putrescent fish bought for Sunday's breakfast would send him a new patient.
"It's fresh, is it?" asked a wistful-looking old woman from a doorway.
"Smell it, laidy! There ain't no extry charge," retorted the coster surlily.
The old woman shook her head. That test was too stern. "She comes from Cornwall," she murmured to herself, "so 'twud put her more in mind o' 'ome, nor liver, wouldn't it?"
There was a chink of coppers behind Peter Ramsay as he rode on, thinking that some folk ought to be punished for trying to ptomaine-poison the king's lieges.
But his mind was full of something else, and before five minutes were over, he was looking down on a sleeping boy, and wondering vaguely for the hundredth time if he or the other doctors were right? Would an operation--not a known one, of course, but one based on new lines--be of any use or not? He would dearly have liked to try.
In truth here, in the spick and span ward, amid those who had been brought in sickened by that outside squalor, it was difficult to realise any lack of hygiene, any lack of fair dealing. Yet that lack had left its mark on the sleeping face of the boy. It lay with a cunning elusive look on its sharp features among the white pillows. What a shutting of the door when the steed was stolen it all was!
Looking at him critically, preternaturally sharp, preternaturally diseased in mind and body as he was, it seemed to be a life not much worth saving; and yet!--if it could be saved!
The upright wrinkles on Peter Ramsay's forehead corrugated the transverse ones as he told himself it was useless to think of it here; in Vienna it would have been different. He had already so far as in him lay encouraged the performance of a critical new operation the very next week, and one was enough at a time. He was very keen, very confident, this young surgeon, fresh from his life abroad; ready to criticise even his superiors if they seemed to him old-fashioned. For his hands reaching out into the darkness around him had felt the touch of Something--Something that he would not lose touch of though it eluded him; so he followed it fast, almost heedlessly.
This boy----? If he had had time or money! Then suddenly he smiled. The thought of Ned Blackborough's hidden hundred pounds came to him as it had come more than once during the last few months. Here was a case for it, only unfortunately he had not the time for private work. Still it was odd what a backing that hundred pounds had been to all sorts of day-dreams. Why it should be so, was a psychological problem; since after all, it was but a paltry sum, and, in all probability, it no longer existed for him; for there had been distinct greed on at least two of the faces which had watched its concealment. It had, no doubt, been appropriated long ago. So the boy must go out, comfortably fitted with regulation crutches, to live, possibly, two or three years at the outside. And yet----
He bent regretfully, tracing the twist of the body beneath the bed-clothes, then looked up at the lingering of a passing footstep.
"Good evening, Mrs. Tressilian. I beg your pardon, Nurse Helen--I am always forgetting."
"Because you will not remember," she replied with a smile. Then her eyes grew soft; she bent over the bed in her turn; "Can nothing really be done for him, doctor? He is so very patient."
There was something about this woman, Peter Ramsay felt, which took him away, as it were, into a desert place apart with nothing in it save himself, truth, and a listener. He had felt it from the moment he had first seen her; and he had told her the truth even then. It was another curious psycho-physiological problem which evaded dissection and analysis; so he had evaded her, ever since--carrying out her promise to herself--she had appeared as a nurse in the hospital now nearly five months ago. But the spell remained.
"Nothing," he replied, half-speaking to himself, and following up his own train of thought; "Nothing at least that will be done--and it would be but an off chance anyhow."
She caught him up swiftly. "Then there is a chance?"
Peter Ramsay's face became a study in cynical reserve; he turned away. "My dear lady," he said, "haven't you been a nurse long enough to know a doctor's convenient formula, 'While there's life, there's hope.'"
To his annoyance as he moved on to the door, she moved also. "I am off duty," she remarked, as if she had not appreciated his slamming of the door in her face, "so it is no breach of rules to tell you that I have had a letter from Ned Blackborough. He is coming back from the Mountains of the Moon--that was about his last address, I believe--but his arm is still troublesome. I should like to show you what he says."
They were in the vestibule now, and Dr. Ramsay paused. He rather admired her pertinacity, and matched her coolness with his own.
"Certainly. May I come in now--or stay! You will want to go out, I expect. Will you look in at my diggings after dinner? I might be able to give you a cup of coffee, if you will?"
"I have no doubt the matron will allow me," she laughed. "Good-bye for the present, Dr. Ramsay."
As he sat waiting for her in a room which beggared description by its untidiness, he felt distinctly nervous; but he was becoming accustomed to the fact that she had a disturbing or rather an exhilarating effect on his nerves. He was a trifle irritated at the fact, a trifle irritated with her because she had fulfilled his predictions.
She was quite normal, and she made an excellent nurse. He had had to admit so much. But it was not her natural metier--that was--something very different.
Possibly he was right. At any rate Helen, entering the room, stood absolutely aghast at its utter lack of comfort. She had been learning much about Peter Ramsay of which she had had no idea, when she came into touch with him in the hospital. To begin with, he was much younger than she had guessed him. She doubted if he was much older, perhaps not quite as old as she was herself. Clever as he was, he had most of the doctor's battle for name and fame before him; and there was a carelessness of public opinion, a certain roughness of very solid truth about him, joined to an utter disregard of his own comfort or that of any one else, except a patient's, which made her feel that here was a man who, above most men, needed a strong, capable, tactful woman to look after him privately, if he was to succeed publicly.
And, though the sick adored him, and every one admitted his skill, he was not one of those men who appeal to the world at large. He was too swift, too incisive. No young woman would darn his stockings because he was a dear; the very maid-servants could leave his room like this!
"I don't expect it's good," he said ruefully, pouring her out a cup of coffee, "but I'm not up to these things. My mother spoilt me. She died three years ago. She was a widow, and I was her only son."
Helen, sipping at her coffee, told herself that explained a good deal. He was capable enough professionally, but--the coffee was execrable!
"It isn't very nice," she admitted, "and why doesn't the housemaid----"
"Oh! I can't have my things touched," he interrupted with a frown; adding as if to change an unwelcome subject, "So the arm is stiff. I'm sorry. We shall have to try electricity. There's a place in London----"
He was off on some new cure, his red bronze eyes shining, his whole bearing full of confidence and vitality. She waited till the subject was exhausted, and then put down her cup, fixing her eyes humorously on his face.
"And now, please, about that boy--No. 36 in the Queen's ward--I came to speak of him, you know."
Peter Ramsay faced her half angrily; then he smiled. "Of course I knew, though I don't see why you wish to find out my opinion."
"Possibly because I have an idea that your opinion may be right," she replied coolly. "What is it you wish to do? Something quite new, I expect."
He frowned. "There you are mistaken. It--or something like it--has been done at Vienna."
"By Pagenheim?"
"What do you know of Pagenheim? I beg your pardon! I was forgetting that women know everything nowadays. Yes, Mrs. Tressilian, by Pagenheim. He was my master."
She knew that; knew also that the great surgeon had sent him back to England as his best pupil.
"Well," she said after a time, "If you won't tell me I will order theWiener Hospital Blatt; I shall see all about it there I suppose."
This time he laughed out loud. "You are very persistent, so I will save you the trouble of finding out in which number it is reported."
When he had finished, she sat looking at him for a moment, feeling a sudden motherly desire to help this curiously capable, curiously inept man, whose strong white surgeon's hands showed themselves firmly gripping each other beyond frail, frayed wristbands.
"But surely if you hold that there is a chance of life for him----" she began.
He rose, and resting his arm on the mantelpiece, looked down on her mentally and physically.
"Life!" he echoed. "What is life worth to him? and how do you know that what we call death ends it? Mind you, I'm not speaking from my own beliefs--they are--well! not much! Belief is positive--I'm not. But you, Mrs. Tressilian. Why do you and your sort hold this life so dear, and why are you all at the same time in such a blessed hurry to get another hour or two of it in which to do something when you believe in a fuller, better life beyond death? It isn't logical. My mother used to say that when she taught me, a three-year-old, about Cain and Abel, I refused to give blame to the former on the ground that he had only sent Abel to heaven. That should be your position."
"And yours?"
"Oh! mine is simple. To a doctor life is merely the converse of death, and death is the devil! We cannot prescribe for a corpse--or for the matter of that levy a fee for so doing--and that is the end and aim of doctoring."
"Why should you say those things, Dr. Ramsay?" she asked quietly. "You know you never take one--at least you would take none from me."
He flushed slightly. "Because I did nothing--and you were an interesting case. I levy a big fee of experience, Mrs. Tressilian. But concerning this boy--my colleagues are against me, and----" He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't think the world will come to an end if No. 36 goes out of it. I shouldn't mind if it did--it isn't worth much."
"But are you not bound?" she persisted. "You have no right to judge what his life might be. A doctor's duty is to save life and defy death at all costs."
His face softened immensely.
"You have got it quite pat, Mrs. Tressilian. That is my duty undoubtedly; but--but I can't afford to do it--as yet--and after all, there is plenty of time--we have a few centuries of evolution before us yet."
"But you--you yourself?" she asked, scanning his face eagerly.
"I," he answered. "I am a temporary aggregation of molecules, or, let us say, electrons. By and by we shall find another word to express the infinitely little--or the infinitely great----"
Here a shrill whistle from the speaking-tube made Helen start and Peter Ramsay smile. "That, I'll bet, will be the infinitely little." He leant over to listen, and his face hardened. "I must go--an old man, apparently in a fit, brought in from the street. Good-bye, Mrs. Tressilian. I'll try and savehislife anyhow."
She lingered on in the room for a while after he had left it, laying an orderly hand almost unconsciously here and there, and feeling that, had she dared, she would like to have gone into his bedroom beyond, and seen if there were any buttons on the back of his shirts. She remembered having heard him ask the matron for the loan of a safety--pin; that looked ominous.
He, meanwhile, going hastily into the surgery, saw a white-haired figure lying flat on the table, and, having the gift of swift diagnosis, called as he entered,
"Prop him up, please--and--dresser--amyl, sharp."
Held back thus by swift help from sinking down to perfect rest, the weary heart rallied, and after a time the old man's set face wavered, he opened his large, pale-blue eyes, and looked about him.
Then the doctor looked about him also. "Hullo! Cruttenden," he said, "you here?"
"I brought him in," replied Ted Cruttenden; "he was speaking to some work-people in the street when he collapsed."
"If you know his friends, you had better send for them to take him home--he ought not to go alone."
The patient was by this time able to smile. Lying back on the pillow, he looked extraordinarily frail and refined, and his voice, urbane to a degree, matched his appearance.
"Friends!" he echoed. "I have none. I left friendship behind me--with other things--years ago."
"Then, if you know no one, you'd better stop here," suggested Peter Ramsay brusquely.
"I said nothing of knowledge, sir," replied the old man; "I know many, and every one knows me. I am Sylvanus Smith."
Dr. Ramsay glanced swiftly at Ted Cruttenden, as if to refresh a casual memory. "Sylvanus Smith," he echoed. "Oh yes! I remember. Then you live near Dinas, and have a beautiful granddaughter--and--and you know Cruttenden?"
Mr. Sylvanus Smith sat up, and flushed a delicate pink. "Excuse me; neither of those qualifications have any bearing on the question. I am President of the Social Congress, and I do happen to have a slight acquaintance with this gentleman. I have to thank you, sir. I saw you amongst my audience, and I presume----"
"Not at all--not at all," interrupted Ted. "If you like, Dr. Ramsay, I will see him home."
As he said the words, he knew that here was a stroke of luck. Without in any way infringing on his compact with Ned Blackborough, here was an opportunity of ingratiating himself with Aura's legal guardian. He would be a fool not to take it, a fool not to make the very most of it.
And yet when, a whole week afterwards, the old man, leaning out of the through carriage to Wales, in which Ted had placed him duly fortified with papers and egg sandwiches, shook him warmly by the hand, saying, "Then you will come to Cwmfairnog at Christmas." The words brought a distinct feeling of meanness to the hearer. Ned Blackborough would have to go alone to the inn. That was not what had been intended; but then the whole business was absurd. He had a great mind to back out of it altogether. And here the swift thought came, that from what he had seen of Mr. Sylvanus Smith, a lordling would have scantier grace than a commoner; so that it might be as well if Ned----
A twinge of remorse had to be stilled by the recollection that everything was fair in love and war, and by heaven--no one could love Aura better than he did. No! no one!
Of course, he would have been a fool not to take the luck sent him, and he was a still greater fool to feel that there was in it any stealing of a march on Ned Blackborough.
What would Hirsch say? For, ever since he had given himself up soul and body to that great man, he had formed a habit of referring to him as his standard of conduct. The result here was that Ted positively blushed at his own scruples.
No, if--there was any unpleasantness--it would be better to end the compact, and let them each do their best on their own footing.
His was very different to what it had been five months ago. There was nothing now to prevent his being as rich as Ned Blackborough; or, in the future, having such a title as his. For at bottom, all things were a question of money. That he had learnt from Mr. Hirsch. A quick wave of eager ambition sent the young blood tingling to the finger-tips. He felt glad he might have to fight fair for the girl he loved. Besides, it would be so much fairer on her. She ought not to be deceived. This highly moral thought brought with it such a sense of conscious virtue as sent him back to his office thinking deliberately how Hirsch would admire Aura when he saw her--in pink satin and diamonds of course.
Ned Blackborough had been to the Mountains of the Moon; at least so he told his cousin when he drove her out from the hospital to New Park the very day of his arrival at home.
"Call it the Mountains of the Moon, my dear," he had said, "it sounds definite and may mean so much--or so little."
This was about a week before Christmas. It gave promise of being a hard one, for a slight sprinkling, more of frost than snow, lay on the roads, and the horses' roughened hoofs echoed cheerfully through the keen air. It was exhilarating, Helen felt, after those long months at the hospital broken only by dull constitutionals. She had begun these by setting her face always to the country; but after a time the long rows of workmen's houses, the dreary muddiness of gravel side-walkings, the intolerable admixture of bricks and bakers' carts had driven her back to wander aimlessly through crowded streets. There she could at any rate see civilisation, pure and undefiled by attempts after the Garden of Eden!
So this was joy. The hedgerows were black with unutterable soot, the sky was grey with smoke, but the birds were twittering among the smutty hips and haws, and overhead a flight of cawing rooks made the grey seem light by their blackness.
She looked round for sympathy to Ned, and was struck by his face.
"You're looking awfully well, Ned," she remarked; "What have you been doing to yourself? You look a perfect boy."
He laughed.
"Having a good time. I found an old man--but that passes. Meanwhile I expect I shall require some healthful calm. My manager tells me the business has been going to pot since I've been away. I shall have to interfere myself, I expect, but that won't be till after Christmas. How's Ramsay getting on?"
Helen looked a trifle stiff. "You had better ask him yourself, you will see him when you drive me back; I only know that he has resigned his appointment."
"So he wrote me. Had a row apparently with the Governing Body--that was ill advised."
"Very," said Helen coolly, "but then Dr. Ramsay has no tact, and is a very obstinate person. Is that New Park? You know I have never been here before."
Ned Blackborough shot a faintly amused glance at her. "It is New Park. Did you ever see an inheritance more calculated to make a man cut his throat?"
It was indeed unexpressibly dreary in its long pompous façade of regularly recessed windows, each with its sham pilasters and heavy entablature.
"It always seems as if it had a sick headache, and it gives me one to look at it. It's a fact," added Ned, as Helen laughed. "It is positively more hideous than--than the Sea View Hotel. I hear, by the way, they have rebuilt that. Have you heard anything more of Hirsch since then?"
Helen gave a fine flush. "He comes down to Blackborough on business. And I have seen him. He is really frightfully distressed because I will not let him pay back that money. Last time he nearly wept."
"He wept because he could not understand," paraphrased Ned. "It is not his fault. It is astonishing how little sense of abstract justice and fairness people have as a rule. They're so set on mercy and loving-kindness that they forget the eye-for-an-eye, the tooth-for-a-tooth ideal. Well, here we are. The house is not quite so bad inside, but it is pretty awful."
It was, though it had been built and upholstered to order regardless of cost. Still there was a certain comfort in the dull red flock of its walls, the dull red fleece of its floors, and when once you reached it, the fire lit up the marvellous expanse of priceless tiles, and steel, and ormulu, and bronze, cheerfully enough.
"Don't try and sit on any of those chairs," said Ned, "they're screwed to their places, I believe. Here's a basket one of mine; and will you pour out tea?"
Yet it was pleasant enough sitting there by the fire in the growing dusk, and Ned's heart gave a great throb as he thought of Aura in her blue smock walking unconcernedly over the priceless pile carpets as if they had been Kidderminster. And she would be right. When she was there all other things sank into insignificance.
"It's terribly big," said Helen. "You ought to marry, Ned."
"I suppose I ought," he replied solemnly, but his thoughts were simply running riot over the suggestion; "it is too big for one."
And then he saw a vision of a blue smock held confidingly by a little toddling child, and something in him seemed to rise up and choke him, so that he had to get up, and walk away from his cousin's curious eyes. So to change the subject he began hurriedly--
"I didn't tell you, did I, about that old man I met in the desert--right away from everybody? I don't believe he was real, but he was a wonder. If you talked Herbert Spencer with him he replied with Nietzsche. There wasn't anything he didn't seem to know, and that he hadn't dismissed as not worth knowing. And yet he knew nothing. If you hurled an example at him he was floored. It was all pure thought. He never did anything else but think. You see he was one of their holiest men, and he had sat in the same place for fifty years."
"You have been back to India, Ned," she exclaimed, "you know you have; and I sent all my letters to Algiers."
He came over to her and sat on the arm of her chair, as he used to do when he was a boy.
"They were forwarded--at intervals," he remarked coolly. "Have you never, Nell, wanted to run away for a bit and find yourself naked, out in the open?" And then, airily, he began to hum that graceless ditty of young subalterns at Pekin when the Embassy had been relieved and the Summer Palace occupied, and the allied army amused itself with burlesques on the vanished foe: