Poor Gwen's death had caused quite a pleasurable excitement in the village.
There can be no question that to all save the immediate few whose natural emotions are involved, most deaths bring a quicker tide of life to the living.
It has been said, indeed, that funerals are often the preludes to marriage. Be that as it may, Gwen, despite her gift of grace, had lived all her short life on such a different plane from the rest of the village girls that, except in the little shepherd's cottage amid the hills, few real tears were shed over her dramatic death.
And it was so dramatic! To die in full song--to shed her life-blood in trying to bring the glad news to other souls. Surely that must avail! Surely that sacrifice must turn those sinful souls to peace.
Though they did not know it, and for Mr. Sylvanus Smith's prospect of peace, it was as well he did not, both Aura and her grandfather were special objects of intercession at many hundreds of chapels the very next Sunday. For the story naturally grew in the telling.
Meanwhile Gwen, poor soul, was laid with much fervour beside her baby, the rector duly officiating; for the old shepherd and his wife, thinking of their own funerals to come, held fast to tradition. Whatever else you might be in life, death brought you back to the Church, back to the solemn old service in which dust is reverently committed to dust, ashes to ashes.
Nearly all the village attended, for, in a way, it was proud of Gwen. There was but one notable absence. Alicia Edwards was not there to take her part in singing "Day of Wrath" over her dead friend. She was in bed or at any rate confined to her room; for the dramatic death on New Year's morning had apparently been too much for her nerves.
The gossips of the village went in and out, condoling with her, and applauding her sensibility, and retailing to her all the affecting particulars of the funeral, the wreaths, the remembrances from souls saved by the dead girl's singing, the excellence of the mournings provided by Myfanwy Jones, and the apparently real grief of Mervyn Pugh, who went about looking like a lost soul himself.
Only over the latter statement did Alicia Edwards commit herself so far as to say with sphinxlike gravity, "I do not wonder. Mervyn and Gwen were always friends. Yes, indeed! even at school they were friends."
Looking back from her new knowledge concerning Gwen's past, Alicia's only wonder was, indeed, that no one had ever suspected Mervyn. And yet, who could suspect Mervyn? Mervyn, the pattern of the village; Mervyn, among whose perfections her own facile heart had been entangled these many years past. Nor was she alone. Half the village girls would have given their eyes to secure him for their own.
And now that he had fallen from his high pedestal, it seemed to her, woman-like, that she desired him more than ever. That desire, in truth, was the cause of her seclusion. She was not ill--simply she could not make up her mind what to do. One-half of her asserted that she ought to denounce Mervyn; that it was wrong for her to allow him thus to play the hypocrite, that it would be good for his soul's health to do penance in sackcloth and ashes; the other half found excuses for him beneath the cloak of consideration for the slur which would be cast by the unrighteous over the whole revival, could it be shown that one of the most prominent in starting it was--so to speak--an unrepentant castaway; for repentance in such a case as this meant the confession for which the elders of the congregation had clamoured, the lack of which had sent an unbaptized child to the happily infinite mercy--seat of God.
Alicia knew all this. She had been well brought up, well drilled by her father in the catechisms, and in her inmost soul--a very conventional, placid, harmless soul--she was quite shocked at Mervyn's stony-heartedness. For all that, she could not make up her mind to denounce him. She would give him time. He knew that she knew his secret, and that she was the only person in the world now who knew it--at least of this world; for the "wild girl of Cwmfairnog," as the village had dubbed Aura, had not even attended the inquest. Martha had given her evidence, and Martha had known nothing. So there was no likelihood of the truth coming out except through her, Alicia. Perhaps Mervyn, knowing this, would come to her and unburden his soul. Undoubtedly, if Providence had not intended her to denounce the sinner--and of this, as the days went on, she became more and more certain--it must have had some other purpose in making her the sole recipient of the terrible knowledge.
What purpose?
For to her, as to Morris Pugh, as to nearly all these traffickers in cheap marvels, the impulse to see some hidden meaning, some direct dealing of the Creator with His creature man, had become almost an obsession.
What purpose, then, could Providence have had in thus choosing Alicia Edwards out of all the village to be this sole recipient?
The answer was easy. That Mervyn might come to her as a sort of mediator, as he might have come to a father confessor.
So, as the time wore on, Alicia waited for Mervyn; but Mervyn never appeared, not even after she came down, becomingly dressed in deep mourning, to sit in the back parlour and receive her friends. Myfanwy Jones, whose holiday had been extended over the funeral by reason of the many orders she had successfully placed for it, looked in several times, but there was not much love lost between the two nowadays. So when, on the morning after the funeral, Myfanwy came to say good-bye, Alicia was relieved. She felt the influence of this big, beautiful, worldly creature to be malign; and, once it was removed, she was sure that Mervyn would surely return to the holder of his secret.
"You will be going by the midday carrier," said Alicia cheerfully; "you will have a fine drive to Llanilo whatever."
"A beautiful drive," assented Myfanwy; "I was trying to make Mervyn Pugh take it with me for a change, but he prefers to mope. I did not know him such a friend of poor dead Gwen."
She challenged Alicia with her bold black eyes, and Alicia felt herself flush.
"When people spend their lives together in holy work, Myfanwy dear," she replied in a purring voice, "it is very close they grow to each other, very close indeed."
"If they spend their lives together anyway," retorted Myfanwy with a superior laugh, "they often grow very close--very close indeed--sometimes too close."
But Alicia was prepared for her, and smiled sweetly. "You do not understand religion, Myfanwy. As Mervyn says, it is such a pity--but we must hope for the best--it will come some day."
"So will Christmas," replied Myfanwy with a sphinxlike smile; "but I am not fond of waiting, whatever you may be. Well, good-bye, dear. Do not be frightened when Williams and Edwards send in their bill--it need not be paid till you are married, remember."
Alicia paled. The memory of that bill was more to her now than the mere fact that when it came, it would mean a demand for money. That she might manage; but how about the claim on her character? For it would be a big bill, a record of much extravagance. One comfort was that, if she married Mervyn--which seemed not so unlikely now as it had seemed a short time ago--he would not be so terribly shocked; or at any rate he would not be in a position to throw so many stones!
It was a lovely afternoon, one of those early January days when earth and sea and sky combine to play a trick on the world, and cheat it into the belief that winter is over. The air, too, felt lighter, more wholesome to Alicia, now that Myfanwy Jones had presumably left the village; presumably, because, though Alicia had not actually seen her go, her boxes had certainly been in the carrier's cart.
Alicia had almost made up her mind that if the mountain would not come to Mahomet, Mahomet must go to the mountain. Another Sunday must not pass without an explanation between her and Mervyn; it would not be right to allow him to remain without reproof and exhortation.
It required a good deal of courage, for she was by nature timid; but by making a duty of it, and assuring herself that his soul's good was her only object, she succeeded in bracing herself up to sufficient virtue for her task. So, feeling there was no time like the present, she spent half an hour in making herself look as attractive as she could in her singing dress--and that had been designed with considerable care for appearances--and set off on her mission. She did not go straight to the minister's house, which stood at the further end of the village--a most incongruous, unhappy-looking villa, such as one sees by dozens in the suburbs of any large town, all stucco, bow windows, and gable ends--for that might have provoked attention. She branched off to the left and so, going up the School Road, was prepared to make her visit on the return journey by going down a pathway which led from the school towards the house. She had often returned from class thus with Mervyn, choosing the longer road for the sake of the handsome boy's company. The thought made her mind drift back to those long years during which she had been taught, and had taught, so many things. What a relief it had been to escape from living by rule; so much time for this, so much time for that; duty punctual as the clock, dependent on the machinery, certain to run down and stop unless it received some continual impetus from without.
--'That which cometh from without.'--
The words came back to her vaguely. Yes! she had been taught so many things. What had she herself learnt? How many four shillings' worth of stamps, for instance, had she not saved up herself, or caused her pupils to save up. Every child in the village had a post-office savings' bank book. They had been taught thrift. But every one of the girls would do as she had done--run into debt over their clothes--or at least put their money on their backs. She was tired of it all. She was hungering for her natural work. She wanted to be the wife of some strong man, bear him children, and live immersed in household details. That was hermétier; she felt drawn to that.
So, as she turned in at the back entrance of the minister's house, her heart was soft; she felt in a sentimental mood. The past was past. Most men's lives held something that was not quite--well, quite respectable--but in this case there would be earnest repentance to make that past more--more presentable.
And then through the window of the dining-room she saw a group of two people standing, their faces to the fire, their backs towards her; but there could be no doubt as to the skin--tight black sheen of the waist round which Mervyn's arm circled in all the security of possession. It was Myfanwy's--Myfanwy in her best dress also!
In a second all the hot Cymric blood which lay hidden somewhere behind Alicia's almost phlegmatic calm had leapt up in resentment; and almost before she realised what she was doing, she had passed the entrance and stood in the room, challenging those two. The table was laid for tea; there was an air of placid comfort, of as it were collusion, which gave the finishing-touch to her anger.
"So you have not gone with the carrier, Myfanwy Jones?" she said.
Mervyn's arm left the black-satin waist hastily, but Myfanwy did not budge. She simply threw a backward glance over her shoulder.
"Oh! good afternoon, Alicia! No! I did not go. Mervyn and I are to drive over to Llanilo in Thomas's waggonette, as soon as we have had our tea."
In an instant it resolved itself into a duel between these two women for the possession of the man who stood, his beauty somewhat blurred by anxiety, looking like a fool between them.
"But I have come," replied Alicia firmly, "to have a talk with Mervyn about--about something; so, perhaps, you will drive alone to Llanilo, Myfanwy. It might be better." She fixed Mervyn with an eye that held in it a world of entreaty besides some indignation.
His inward uneasiness felt the threat. "Perhaps it would be better, Myfanwy," he said helplessly. "We have much to talk over and arrange before we start again on--on our work."
Myfanwy turned on him like a flash. "Will you hold your tongue, Mervyn Pugh," she said magnificently. "This is between Alicia Edwards and me." Then she turned back again to her adversary, "Say what you will to him now, Alicia. We are engaged to be married, so you can say to me what you will say to him."
Alicia gave a little cry of real dismay. "Oh Mervyn! Say it is not true;--think of poor silly Gwen, but just dead!" she pulled herself up, being in truth still but half-hearted in her desire to denounce.
Myfanwy shot a swift glance at Mervyn; she was really and honestly fond of him, and the idea, at any rate, which Alicia's words suggested was not new to her. Still no matter what she said to him about it in the future, this was the time for defence--quick, ready defence.
"Yes!" she said. "Gwen is dead, so why should you drag her out of the grave, poor soul! 'Let the dead past bury its dead,' Alicia, you learnt that in school, I am sure. And, whatever happens, I am going to marry Mervyn--of that you may be sure."
It was then that Alicia, feeling the inward certainty that this was true, that her bolt had failed of its mark, gave the rein to denunciation.
"But I must speak to him! Oh Mervyn! Think," she cried, her voice ringing with a perfect medley of emotion, "you who have saved so many, think of your own soul. Think how the soul of your child, think how the soul of poor Gwen cry out against you!"
A man's step on the gravel outside made Myfanwy start forward with a muffled exclamation.
"Be quiet, will you! you will be overheard--you--you will ruin him! Will you hold your tongue?" she cried.
But Alicia was past worldly wisdom; even with Myfanwy's strong hand threatening her, she stood her ground, and her voice rose--
"Let them hear! Let all the world know that Mervyn Pugh--Mervyn the good, the righteous, is Gwen's seducer, the father of her child!"
Then, even her anger failed before the knowledge that Morris Pugh stood at the door listening.
With a muffled cry Mervyn turned and flung himself down on the sofa, his face crushed into the hard horsehair cushions; vaguely he felt their hardness to be a shelter.
Myfanwy, looking as if she could have killed Alicia, moved to him and laid her hand softly, protectingly on his shoulder.
"Do not fret, Mervyn," she said coldly, "it will soon be over."
So for a space there was silence. Then Morris Pugh braced himself to the task which was his, as pastor of these wandering sheep.
"As you stand before your Maker, Alicia Edwards," he said, bringing his hand down on the table to grip it with clenched nervous force, "is this accusation true?"
Her answer was a sudden burst of tears, "Don't--don't ask me," she sobbed.
"Is it true?"
His voice insistent, almost cold in its very insistence, would take no denial.
"Yes!" The assent could scarcely be heard for the sobs.
Morris Pugh gave a sigh. It was almost as if all that was human in him left his body with that long, laboured breath, for an instant afterwards he was the accuser, the judge.
"And you--Mervyn Pugh--God forgive you for bearing my father's honoured name--have done this wrong without repentance. You have stood by your child's grave and said never a word--never a word even to me, your spiritual guide, although I asked you, remember that! I asked you; and you have stood before the Lord all these long months, eating at His Table, drinking of His Blood, with this sin lying unconfessed in your heart! And you and the partner of your sin have stood together before the Great White Throne, your voices mingling in God's praise while your bodies----"
Mervyn started to his feet.
"Morris! Morris! before Heaven, that is not true--no! I am not so bad as that!"
Checked in the full flow of his superhuman blame, the minister paused, and something of the man came back to him.
"I will say nothing of myself," he went on, "of--of the shame. But have you any excuse? Can you show just cause why I should not deal with you, alas!--a thousand times alas!--my brother--as a minister of God must deal with the unrepentant sinner, with the hypocrite, with the man who has defiled the innermost sanctuary of God's temple?"
There was silence. Only round Myfanwy's full lips showed a certain impatience, a weariness for this necessary fuss to subside, and leave room for common sense.
"So you have no excuse. Then prepare for the condemnation of the congregation. Prepare to be humbled to the dust before the Lord."
Myfanwy shifted impatiently. "What good will that do? It will only humble the congregation," came her clear, full voice; "It will only be a paragraph in the papers."
Morris Pugh winced. "I thought of that before," he muttered. "God forgive me, I thought of it before--too much, perhaps. No!" he added firmly, "the shame must be faced! Yes, Mervyn, it must be faced, even if our mother----"
And then, with a cry, Morris Pugh himself was on his knees by the table, his hands clutching at its rim, his head between them sinking to the very dust.
"Oh, God forgive him! Oh God, for my sake, for her sake, forgive him!--for the sake of her many prayers and tears, forgive him!"
Mervyn stood pale as death. Alicia, her little part long since played, sobbed softly in a corner; only Myfanwy looked at them all three almost with distaste.
"Mervyn is very sorry, I am sure of that--it could not have been worth all this--this fuss," she said hardly; "but why should shame be faced when--when every one is dead and buried? Mervyn can go away."
"The living and the dead are one, woman, in the sight of the Lord!" replied Morris, his righteous wrath re-aroused by her words. "Mervyn may go if he likes, but I, his brother, will denounce him before the congregation."
His lips, his hands, were trembling, but his voice was firm.
Mervyn sat down on the sofa again and covered his handsome face with his hands. His mind was in a whirl, its chief thought being abject remorse for his brother's sake--for his mother's.
"It is best so, Myfanwy," he muttered hoarsely; "Go--it--it is all I can do for--for them now."
She took up her cloak and hat without a word. There was no use in trying to persuade people when they were so exalted.
"Yes, I will go," she said, "but you are very silly, Mervyn. Come, Alicia! You have done enough mischief for one day, I am sure."
Alicia followed her meekly, feeling not in the least ashamed of the rôle she had played; for these violent emotions were to her part of the religious stock-in-trade. By and by they would quiet down, Mervyn would make a noble confession, and eventually he would rise superior to all these troubles; above all, rise superior to Myfanwy.
The girls did not say one word to each other as they went back to the village together. Any one meeting them might have judged them the best of friends; only as Myfanwy branched off to the smith's cottage she paused a moment to say with a smile--
"Some day I will pay you out for this, Alicia Edwards--so, mark my words, you will pay!"
"May you be forgiven, Myfanwy Jones," retorted Alicia with spirit; "I have but done my duty."
Left alone by themselves the brothers reverted of necessity to more humble, more homely relations. The righteous wrath gave place to real grief, the blank, hopeless remorse to real regret.
By the time that the housekeeper came in to clear away the almost untouched tea, they had both accepted the position in so far as it could be accepted. There was nothing for it but to face this public confession, and by so doing make what reparation could be thus tardily made. Mervyn, indeed, was by far the more cheerful when the time came to say good-night. He had barely had time to think; the relief of having touched bottom, as it were, was great; he felt, in fact, as a repentant criminal might do on his last night on earth, as if the morrow which was to bring expiation must also bring pardon and peace.
They had spent the evening together on the highest possible plane of religious exaltation, and it was Mervyn who gripped his brother's hand and said "Courage!" out of the fulness of his emotion. His face looked almost saintly as he said it.
An hour later, indeed, when Morris--who had lingered near the dying fire, beset, now he was alone, by almost unbearable grief--looked in to see if his brother were asleep, he found him lying like a child, smiling in his dreams.
Morris gave a faint sob, and Mervyn stirred in his sleep. "Mother," he said hurriedly, softly--"Mother, dear, dear mother--I must."
Instinctively Morris blew out the light he held, lest it might wake the dreamer from his dream; so in the moonlight he stood, torn asunder by love and grief, watching the dim peaceful form upon the bed.
Suddenly he turned and, closing the door silently behind him, went downstairs once more. Outside the narrow walls of the house, the moonlight slumbered peacefully upon the everlasting hills. Surely somewhere beyond the narrow walls of this world's judgment slept eternal Peace.
An instant afterwards the front door closed softly, and Morris Pugh, leaving his brother asleep, had gone to find wisdom where he had often sought it of late in the temple not made with hands.
It must have been an hour later that Mervyn woke, roused by a pebble at his window. He sat up with blurred consciousness, wondering vaguely what it was, until another pebble struck the pane, and a voice cried in a soft whisper, "Mervyn!"
Myfanwy! by all that was strange! Then in a second the whole memory of what had happened came back to him; but it came back to find him, as it were, a giant refreshed with sleep. None of us are really the same for two consecutive hours, and many a man will brave that in the morning, from which he would shrink at night. And there, as he peered through the curtain, was Myfanwy, sure enough, beckoning to him to come down. A sight sufficient to bring combativeness to any young blood, even without those two hours of blessed rest in sleep.
"Mervyn," she said, when five minutes after, their lips met in a long kiss; "I have come for you. See how I love you, to do this thing which might ruin any poor girl's reputation. You have done wrong, my poor boy, very wrong; but so have many of the others who are so saintly. And why should you stay to be prayed over by them--by Alicia Edwards too! I will not have it! There will be no moremeif you stop, Mervyn. Come now with me to Blackborough, the waggonette is waiting up the road at the bridge; we can catch the three o'clock mail at Llanilo. If you come, Mervyn, I will marry you in three days at the registrar's office."
"But," he gasped, half-drunk with her kisses, half-stunned by his remembrances.
She stamped her foot. "You must decide. I cannot stop here all night, some one may come. Oh! Mervyn! Mervyn! do you not feel that you were not made for this narrow life? You--you are no worse than others, and you have brains. You can make money if you will in the world, but not here."
Those two hours of blessed sleep! How they had obliterated that stress of over-wrought emotion, and how his young blood leapt up in assent. But Morris----
Her instinct was keen--"And see you, Mervyn, it will be better for Morris, too! If you go, why should he speak? What is confession without a culprit? Come! you can write to him from Blackborough. Come--or there is no more me for you from to-night."
When Morris Pugh returned from the temple that is made without hands an hour later, the house lay very still in the moonlight. He paused at his brother's door to listen. There was no sound. So he passed on to his own room, took his father's Bible, his mother's picture, the few odd pounds he had in the house, and so passed downstairs again to the writing-table in the study, where he had thought out so many sermons, so many appeals to his wandering flock. But it was neither a sermon nor an appeal which he set down on paper and left lying where Mervyn would see it next morning. Rather was it a confession, for this is how it ran:--
"Wisdom has come to me among the eternal hills, brother. Go your way. Be one of the saints in light. I will go mine since I cannot stay and remain silent. May God in His mercy preserve you always from the judgment of men, and give you His Grace."
It lay there all night with the moonlight shining on it. Then the moonbeams faded and the greyness of the false dawn found it lying there still.
But the breath of the real dawn winning its way through the door opened by the housekeeper who came to set the room in order, tilted it into the waste-paper basket, whence swiftly it made its way to the fire by the hands of tidiness.
Thus Mervyn would have had no chance of seeing it, even if he had been there.
But he was not.
Peter Ramsay put down the letter with a low whistle and stood staring at his half-packed portmanteau. Then he took up the letter again and re-read it.
There was no doubt about it! The governing body of St. Helena's Hospital for Children offered him the appointment of resident physician at a salary of £600 a year.
But where the deuce was the hospital?
Egworth. That was one of the suburbs of Blackborough; the most desirable suburb, for it stood on a hill, and so above the smoke-pall of the factory city. But he remembered no hospital there. Once upon a time some speculator had built a huge framework of a place that was to have been a hotel, or a hydropathic, or something of the sort, on the site of the old manor house at the very top of the rise. He remembered Phipp's Folly, as it was called, with its cold deserted look-out of roughly-glazed windows; but of hospitals--nothing.
It must be some small place. Yet still £600 a year was liberal.
"If you would prefer to see the hospital before making a decision the authorities will be happy to show you over, and I may mention that the governing body will be in committee on the 18th of this month, and could give you an interview."
Thus wrote the secretary.
The 18th? That was to-day. The letter had been delayed, partly because he had changed his lodgings, partly because he had run out of town from Saturday to Monday to see a friend before leaving for Vienna. Of course he could put off his journey for a day or two and still arrive easily before the date he had originally fixed.
On the other hand, as it was but a two hours' run to Blackborough, why should he not go down by the 12 o'clock luncheon train, and be back in time to start, if need be, by the Oriental express in the evening? No reason at all. He would do this, and he might find time, even if St. Helena's proved to be a fraud, to look in at St. Peter's into the bargain.
"St. Helena's Hospital," said the cabman at the station confidentially, "that'll be the no'o one as the Syndicate 'as bin makin' out o' Phipp's Folly."
Out of Phipp's Folly! So that was it; quaint certainly. "I suppose so," he replied; "they must have been pretty nippy about it."
Cabby's face fell. "Nippy," he echoed, "Nippy ain't in it. They've 'ad workmen over from the States and fitters from Germany, an' a regular cordon round the place to prevent union men havin' a look in. One thing is, it must have cost 'em a pot of money--but--but they done it! And they do say as it is fust class, and the old gardens a sight. So pop in, sir. I'll have you there in twenty minutes, if you'll give me three shillin'."
The three shillings were promised and Peter Ramsay spent those twenty minutes in pleasurable excitement. This was something out of the common. If it had been well done Phipp's Folly might be an ideal hospital, and there was something stimulating, something which stirred the imagination in this sudden development. Of course money could do everything, but how seldom money was spent in this way; for money inessealways had that postulate of more money inpossebehind it. There was only one man he knew----
A quick wonder was checked by the swift turn of the cab through the wide open iron gates, while the new gravel of a broad semicircular sweep crisped under the wheels. But there was nothing to tell of recent work in the green lawns with their old spreading cedars, which lay between the two gates. And the façade itself! What an enormous improvement those wide balconies were, and how useful they might be. The whole place had an air of having been in use for years, and as the cab stopped a hall porter in livery came alertly down the porch steps, followed by a hall boy. That was a trifle too much for a good thing! No! there was another cab driving in by the other gate which explained the boy.
Peter Ramsay paused to give a general look round. Certainly so far as the outside went, nothing could be more perfect. What a splendid playground for the children the garden would be sloping away in varying degrees of wildness to a real dingle at the further foot of the hill. And that glass palace attached to the left must be a winter garden. On this warm day the doors were open and Dr. Ramsay could see swings, see-saws, rocking-horses, tall flowering shrubs, and--yes! birds, actually birds feeding on the floor or flying about, apparently content.
Close to the porch against the half-basement story, he could see through the glazed doors rows of perambulators, invalid carriages, and advancing to meet him with welcoming wave of the tail was a magnificent Newfoundland dog, evidently intended to be an important factor in the establishment.
There was imagination everywhere.
"Dr. Ramsay!" came an astonished voice at his elbow. He turned to see Mrs. Tresillian pausing in the very act of giving two shillings to her cabman.
"Mrs. Tresillian," he echoed, "how--how very----"
She stepped forward and looked at him--he stepped forward and looked at her. Then with one voice they both said:
"Ned! I felt it was Ned!"
Helen Tresillian gave a sigh of relief. "I have been wondering, ever since I got this," she held out a letter, and Dr. Ramsay mechanically held out his also, "who it could be who was offering me this place of matron, and now--dear me! How silly of me not to think of Ned before. But you see I have been away in Scotland--I only came back to-day--and I had not heard any Blackborough news since I was here before Christmas--so I could hardly guess, could I?" She cast a glance around her. "But this is Ned, of course. It is like a fairy tale. Let us go in and see it. I expect it is--perfect."
They went up the steps, solemnly followed by the Newfoundland, the hall porter, and the hall boy; but on the threshold Helen paused.
"Isn't it like a fairy tale?" she repeated. "'And in an instant there appeared a most beautiful hospital all fitted with cots and medicine bottles and nurses'--Ah! here comes one of them. How quaint--but oh! how sensible!"
It was rather a buxom little person who came out from a side-door. Something both in her fair smiling face and her dress recalled an old Dutch picture. Her neat white stockings and black rubber-soled, heelless shoes were well seen below a dark-blue cotton dress, full in the skirt, loose in the body, just fastened round the throat without any attempt at a collar, and ending short above the elbow. On her head, almost completely covering her smooth fair hair, she wore a white linen cap gathered in to tightness with a narrow tape tied at the back.
Dr. Ramsay gave a big sigh. "By George!" he murmured, "that's workmanlike if you like."
"I was to give you these," said the newcomer holding out two notes, one addressed to "Peter Ramsay, Esq., M.D., F.R.C.S., Medical Officer (designate)," the other to "Mrs. Tresillian, Matron (designate), St. Helena's Hospital, Egworth."
"It is from Ned," said Helen softly, handing him hers when she had read it. "I expect he has written you the same--I think he is certain to have written just the same."
They were in fact the same, word for word, short, and very much to the point.
"Dear Ramsay (or Helen),--I have built this hospital for you and No. 36 in the Queen's Ward. You will find him waiting for you in No. 7 overlooking the garden. He is at present sole occupant of the hospital. I hope you will accept the responsibility of killing or curing him. If you don't I must find someone else as St. Helena's Hospital--which by the way has a permanent endowment of £200,000--cannot possibly remain without a doctor or a matron. So don't say 'No,' unless you really dislike the place. Yours,
"Blackborough."
The tears for some reason or other came into Helen's eyes, and even Peter Ramsay winked. It was a fairy tale indeed.
"These are your rooms sir," said the little Dutch nurse, "The Governing body desire me to say they would be pleased to alter them in any reasonable way you might desire."
Peter Ramsay looked round the wide rooms whose walls were almost all cupboards, which was heated by a self-feeding stove, where the doors and drawers shut automatically, and the very wash-hand basin tilted itself empty, with a distinctly annoyed smile. "I don't believe even I could be untidy in it," he said grudgingly, "But if you will excuse me, nurse--who are the Governing Body?"
"Oh! there are several gentlemen, I believe; but I only know the one name--Lord Blackborough. I have not seen him. He is to be here to-day, however--it is their first Committee meeting, you know."
"It--it was built by a Syndicate, wasn't it?" asked Helen.
"Yes; by a Syndicate. I don't think Lord Blackborough had anything to do with it. These are your--that is, the matron's rooms."
Helen gave a little cry. They were the replica of her rooms at the Keep, even to the row of flower-pots on the window-sills and the little niche for herprie-dieuchair. What a memory he had--and what an imagination!
"They must have spent any amount of money over it," continued the buxom little nurse, "for everything is quite perfect--on a small scale of course--I mean in comparison with the London hospitals; but none of them, so far as I know, is half so well equipped for children. It will be a pleasure to work here."
She threw open the door of a ward and introduced Nurse Mary, an elderly woman also in the quaintly Dutch dress.
"There are only four cots in each ward," said Sister Ann, "and they have all a wide balcony on to which the cots can be wheeled, and every ward in thus part of the house is practically self-supporting." She threw open another side door in the landing. "The bath-room and the nurses' room are over there and this is the pantry. There is a lift from the kitchen."
Everything in truth was perfect, and Peter Ramsay gave a great sigh of content over the marble operating-room with its glass casing, its endless silver-plated taps, and tubes, and sprays, and levers.
"I believe," he said suddenly, excitedly, "It is a replica of Pagenheim's--yes! I am certain that is his new adjustor--" He was deep in the mechanism in a moment.
"There were German or Austrian workmen at it, I know," said Sister Ann beaming over with content, "But it is absolutely complete, isn't it?"
Truly it was complete in every detail. A very gem amongst hospitals, a very pearl of places where disease and death could be faced at close quarters. Yes! even to the little marble mortuary where carven biers stood waiting under the shadow of a great white cross.
"We must see number 36," said Helen to Dr. Ramsay, "It was built for him remember, as well as for us."
The plural pronoun gave Dr. Ramsay a little thrill which he shook off impatiently.
"That is the worst part of it," he said, "I am by no means sure about No. 36."
But the first sight of the boy who was playing draughts with his nurse in a great wide play-room with a lift from it to the winter-garden below, set him wondering if in very truth he could not set those crooked things straight.
"The Secretary's compliments, please," said the hall porter when they found themselves back in the vestibule, "and the Governing Body will be glad to see you, when you are disengaged."
They looked at one another. They had lingered over their inspection; it was already close on four o'clock, and if the Oriental mail had to be caught Peter Ramsay must leave at the half hour.
If?...
It did not take him long to decide. He thought of the appeal in those words "Don't say 'No,' unless you dislike the place." He would not at any rate go to Vienna that night.
"I am disengaged now," he said, looking at Helen Tresillian, "if you are."
So they followed their guide down a passage to the right wing of the house where he knocked at a door labelled Secretary's Office. A small man sadly humpbacked, but with a quick, intelligent face and a most determined chin, rose as they entered and bowed.
"If you would kindly step within," he said, opening an inner door, "Dr. Ramsay and Mrs. Tresillian, sir."
The door closed behind them and--and----
Ned Blackborough jumped up from a comfortable chair by the fire and came forward with outstretched hands.
"By George! I was nearly asleep. What a time you've been! I thought you must have gone away disgusted."
"My dear Ned!" gasped Mrs. Tresillian, "you don't surely mean that you--you only--are the Governing Body?"
"If you will sit down and pour us out some tea," he said coolly, pointing to a little table laid out by the fire, "I will tell you what I am--or rather what I am not--for I have been most things this last month. I had no idea it would have been such a business."
He might have said he had had no idea it would cost so much money, but he did not, for to him the only use of money was to spend it. So as they drank their tea, he told them how the idea had come to him before Christmas, when Helen had first told him of No. 36 and the discussion concerning the pot of beer had begun. How he had rushed everybody, bribing everybody to unheard-of haste. Just a month, he said, from start to finish; but he had had to get bricklayers, plasterers, painters over, by wire, from the States, and buy all the fittings in Germany. It was very unpatriotic, of course, but what could one do when the Trades' Unions would only allow a man to lay one-half the number of bricks in a day that the Americans laid, and when English firms talked of Christmas Day, Boxing Day and the general holiday dislocation of trade? He never could have done it but for Woods, the little dumpity who had introduced them. The man was an old watchmaker who had lost employment through the Swiss competition, and who had had the pluck to spend his last pound or two in going over to Geneva to see how it was that the foreigner could work cheaper. He, Ned, had come across him in the park one night and had lent him--only lent him, of course, with no hope of ever seeing him or it again--a sovereign! But the fellow had come back and had repaid the sovereign! He had written a pamphlet on his views and sold it in the streets. So?--so they had joined hands, being of the same way of thinking.
"I was awfully afraid when we were down at Plas Afon, Helen," he said, "that the thing would get blown upon; what with all the telegrams and the people who came to see me."
"But you told me," she replied reproachfully, "that it was mostly about that strike at the works."
"So it was--partly," he answered with a smile. Then he looked grave. "I'll tell you what, I've been busy this last fortnight, and no mistake."
"With the strike," she asked quickly.
"Yes! with the strike," he answered after a pause. "I went into the whole thing from the beginning, and I found that those particular factories had been working at a loss for the last three years. I showed the accounts to the men, and pointed out that under the circumstances no master could be expected to accede to a demand for a rise in wages. They wouldn't listen--I suppose, really, they couldn't listen, so I closed the works, gave them each a month's pay in their pockets, and told them I hoped they'd find a better master. I couldn't do anything else in common fairness. It comes to that in the end."
He walked to the window moodily and looked out, then turned to them with one of his sudden brilliant smiles.
"And you, good people? What have you decided; but perhaps I had better give you a short outline of what St. Helena's Hospital is to be."
"In the first place, Woods is to be the Secretary and Treasurer, and all that sort of thing, with a staff under him. There is to be no governing body, but the money will be vested in a trust, and the whole staff of the hospital shall form a general committee. This will ensure the appointment of really reliable persons all through. Sister Ann--you saw her--she has every diploma under the sun, and is as hard as nuts--is, for the present, head under you, Ramsay, of the nursing department. You are head, for the present, of the medical and surgical, with help as required, and Helen here is to boss the whole lot of you in housekeeping--it is really what you are cut out for, you know, Helen, though you did fuss over thechauffeurdinners."
"But I don't quite see why," began Peter Ramsay argumentatively, "all this has to be done. If it was to provide me----"
Ned Blackborough interrupted him. "It was to supply you--and the world," he said almost sarcastically--"with a place in which there were no vested interests. It was to provide you--and a few other working men and women--with a place here they could work without let or hindrance, where they were responsible for the whole show--yes! even for those who were to come after them. Don't bring in any one, Ramsay, because he is a brilliant operator; pay him, if you like, to come in and operate, but keep your staff good men and true, who will try to secure an apostolic succession of good men and true. Then--then no one will quarrel over a pint of beer! Do you accept?"
"I accepted from the very beginning, Ned," said Helen quickly; "the moment I saw the Newfoundland dog, I----"
Ned laughed. "I thought of bringing your father's retriever; but he wasn't warranted with children--so I got that bumbler."
Peter Ramsay was taking his turn at the window, looking out with eyes that had a blur in them. Suddenly he wheeled----
"Yes! I accept, Lord Blackborough, and--and may Heaven do so and to me and more also if----"
He wrung Ned's hand instead of finishing his sentence.
Lord Blackborough threw himself into the armchair and stretched out his legs in relief.
"Nunc dimittis," he said, "and now for a few details. You won't be able to start, of course, for some time. The place is fairly dry, having been roofed over, you remember, but some of the partition work is a bit damp, though we've had it all dried as well as we could, and your rooms are dog dry. So is Number Seven ward. But for a while you will have to go slow. Sister Ann, Woods, and the housekeeper--I hope you will like her, Helen; if you don't give her the sack, for she will have her vote in the housekeeping committee, though of course the under servants won't--or, at any rate, only on certain points. You will find Woods has it all worked out, however, he has a head like an American roll-top desk. Well! those three can manage, so if you want any special fit-up Oh! by the way, I've left the instruments to you, Ramsay, except the ordinary ones. Woods has enough in hand to pay----"
"And what is to become of you, Ned," asked Helen anxiously, noting a certain jumpiness of insouciance in her cousin's manner, a certain, almost uncanny, clearness in his eyes. "Are you going back to New Park?"
"Ye gods and little fishes! No!" he ejaculated. "Do I look, Helen, like a churchwarden, or any one else who would find comfort in Turkey carpets? I, my dear child, am going to find rest unto my soul in my own way. I--I am going to the Grecian Archipelago!"
"My dear Ned!" she laughed, "don't be so ridiculous! Whatareyou going to do? You look tired!"
"Tired!" he echoed, with a quaint hint of a break in his voice; "I should think I was tired! So would you be if you had to consort with--how is it Walt Whitman puts it?--'tinsmiths, locksmiths, and they who work with the hammer, cabmen and mothers of large families.' I know now how my uncle must have felt. Excuse me, Helen, but I am a little bit harassed. You don't know what I've had to do and haven't had to do over this business; but I've got through it without any one guessing I was the syndicate. However, since I've started you, I really am off to Athens to-night. Afraid I shan't have your company on the Oriental express--ah, Ramsay? Now, as I have to see Ted Cruttenden--who is just back, I hear, from Paris--before I start, I'll say good-bye."
"But will you catch the express?" asked Dr. Ramsay incredulously.
"I expect so. I have a special," replied Lord Blackborough carelessly.
They looked at each other after he had left the room.
"I hope he will take a rest," said Helen, still more anxiously. "I've never seen him look so--so curious--as if he were seeing visions----"
"He is a little fine-drawn," said the doctor shortly; "quiet will set him all right, I expect."
Meanwhile Ned in his motor was running close up to time-limit on his way to Ted's office. Even if he missed the express he was not going away without telling the latter that he had spoken to Aura, that she had refused him, but that--well! he had some reason for hoping she might change her mind. He would have written this had he been able to get Ted's address in Paris, but no one knew it at the office, or at any rate they professed not to know it. Ted, however, had returned that morning, and Ned had telephoned down to him warning him to expect a visit.
So there he was in his private room, looking just a little disturbed, just a little combative; yet the Paris visit had been successful beyond his hopes. So successful indeed, that there was a really magnificent diamond ring in his breast-pocket awaiting leisure for him to take it down to Cwmfaernog.
"I'm off for six weeks--to be exact, for thirty-nine days--to Athens," said Ned, "and I wanted to see you for a moment first, because I have something to tell you--that, I think, you ought to know. I asked Aura Graham to marry me--on New Year's Day it was----"
Ted's heart gave a great thump. It made him conscious of the engagement ring, in its fine blue morocco case, in his breast-pocket.
"Yes----" he said chillily--"and--and----" He could not get his tongue to say "she accepted you," although, the instant he heard Ned's confession, he made up his mind that it must not force his hand in any way. The engagement was not yet made public; they had a perfect right to keep it secret if they chose.
"She refused me--but----" Here Ned found some little difficulty in going on, "but I am not so sure if--if she would refuse me again. That really is all I've come to say."
He looked frankly at his companion.
Ted stooped down and stirred the fire.
"Thanks. Of course that is your opinion--I--I don't agree with it; but anyhow a man can but take his chance. You take yours and I'll take mine."
"Done!" said Ned with a laugh, and they parted.